Milton Suggs discussed his current project, “Data Toward Equity & the Black Child National Agenda,” which aims to use data science to give shape to the concepts and goals behind the Equity Child Research Coalition at the UNC FPG Child Development Institute. His talk expanded on the presentation given by Iheoma Iruka. Suggs explained that the process begins with collecting publicly available data in areas such as childcare, education, healthcare, justice, as well as general population and demographic data, at the national, state, county, and city levels. Data collection is a primary step to equity work, as being able to prove a necessity in underprivileged communities is a key factor in policy changes. Suggs used several platforms, languages, and tools to process, visualize, and analyze this data, including Jupyter Notebooks, Anaconda, Python, R, SQL, Matplotlib, Seaborn, Tableau, and Google Data Studio. Using this data to advance equity hinges upon his team’s ability to effectively analyze the information, make correlations, and assess the current state of equity. Suggs and Iruka together concluded this portion of the seminar by elaborating on how when disparities between populations and communities are evidenced in an objective, intentional way, the data can then be leveraged to advocate for impactful policy and legislation, flag issues and discrepancies, and contribute to societal progress.
Click here to view the talk on YouTube.
Milton Suggs, Data Scientist
Department: FPG Child Development Institute | Faculty Profile
Featured on: March 24, 2022 (Event Page)
Session Title: Transforming Youth Advocacy (Event Recap)
Tools, Information, and Resources:
- Jupyter Notebooks: The Jupyter Notebook is the original web application for creating and sharing computational documents. It offers a simple, streamlined, document-centric experience.
- Anaconda: Anaconda offers the easiest way to perform Python/R data science and machine learning on a single machine. Users can start working with thousands of open-source packages and libraries today.
- Python: Python is a programming language that lets you work more quickly and integrate your systems more effectively.
- R: R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics. It compiles and runs on a wide variety of UNIX platforms, Windows and MacOS.
- SQL: SQL, structured query language, is the standard language for creating and maintaining relational databases.
- Matplotlib: Matplotlib is a comprehensive library for creating static, animated, and interactive visualizations in Python. Matplotlib makes easy things easy and hard things possible.
- Seaborn: Seaborn is a Python data visualization library based on matplotlib. It provides a high-level interface for drawing attractive and informative statistical graphics.
- Tableau: Tableau is a visual analytics platform transforming the way we use data to solve problems — empowering people and organizations to make the most of their data.
- Google Data Studio: Google Data Studio is a visualization and reporting tool, and an integral part of Google Marketing Platform. It enables an enhanced approach to decision-making, allowing your entire organization to readily access and use marketing insights.