Editing Community Data Science Workshops (section)

== Overview ==

[[Image:Cdsw combo images-1.jpg|thumb|600px|[[Community Data Science Workshops/Photos|More photos from events]].]]

The '''Community Data Science Workshops''' are a series of project-based workshops for anyone interested in learning how to use programming and data science tools to ask and answer questions about online communities like [https://en.wikipedia.org Wikipedia], [http://twitter.org Twitter], [[:w:free software|free and open source software]], and [[:w:civic media|civic media]].

The workshops are for people with ''no previous programming experience.'' The goal is to bring together both researchers and academics as well as participants and leaders in online communities.  The workshops have all been free of charge and are open to the public.

The sessions are scheduled for one Friday evening and three Saturdays all day. Each session involves a period for lecture and technical demonstrations in the morning. This is followed by lunch. The rest of the day consists of self-directed work on programming and data science projects supported by more experienced mentors.

Our goal is that, after the three workshops, participants will be able to use data to produce numbers, hypothesis tests, tables, and graphical visualizations to answer questions like:

* Are new contributors to an article in Wikipedia sticking around longer or contributing more than people who joined last year?
* Who are the most active or influential users of a particular Twitter hashtag?
* Are people who participated in a Wikipedia outreach event staying involved? How do they compare to people that joined the project outside of the event?

Our very first workshops were originally modeled after the [[:openhatch:Boston Python Workshop|Boston Python Workshop]] but most of our curriculum is brand new and has been developed and modified by the mentors and with feedback from the participants.