Toronto Data Workshop

We share best practice for data science, and are especially interested in the data munging/cleaning/prep/comms stages that folks typically don’t talk about. We meet for an hour each week and are interested in anything that is data-focused across academia and industry. Typically, Fridays at noon (Toronto time) via Zoom, with most talks recorded and shared. All welcome. Free. Sign up here.

Overview

The Toronto Data Workshop (TDW) brings together academia and industry to consider, collate, share, and disseminate best practices in doing data science, especially in the data-centric steps of a data science project: collection; cleaning; storage; retrieval; dissemination; protection; and communication. We meet weekly for an hour and aim to have a roughly even split of participants from academia and industry over the course of each term. For an invitation please sign up here. Anyone is welcome to attend - you don’t need to be affiliated with the university.

Current organizing committee:

Past committee members:

The TDW is a joint initiative between the Faculty of Information and the Department of Statistical Sciences at the University of Toronto and we especially thank Dean Wendy Duff and Chair Radu Craiu for their support.

Current schedule

Fall 2022

Date Speaker Recording
Fri 9 Sep 2022, noon - 1pm Ryan Briggs, University of Guelph https://youtu.be/dyLtxZM89iE
Thu 22 Sep 2022, 5pm - 6pm Melina Vidoni, Australian National University -
Fri 30 Sep 2022, 1pm - 2pm Emily Giambalvo and Ence Morse, The Washington Post -
Fri 7 Oct 2022, noon - 1pm Rohan Alexander, University of Toronto https://youtu.be/omvXLYpcKEY
Fri 14 Oct 2022, noon - 1pm April Wang, University of Michigan https://youtu.be/SD1Ofp0F5is
Fri 21 Oct 2022, noon - 1pm Meg Risdal, Kaggle (Google) -
Fri 4 Nov 2022, noon - 1pm Meggie Debnath and Maitreyee Sidhaye, St. Michael’s Hospital, Unity Health Toronto https://youtu.be/ltA_vOwrIWc
Fri 18 Nov 2022, noon - 1pm Lindsay Katz, University of Toronto https://youtu.be/lYOdCNJOusg
Fri 25 Nov 2022, noon - 1pm Marcel Fortin and Leanne Trimble U of T Map & Data Library https://youtu.be/_Ec40JPOxcA
Fri 16 Dec 2022, noon - 1pm Zane Schwartz, Investigative Journalism Foundation

Past schedules

Winter 2022

Date Speaker Recording
Fri 28 Jan 2022, noon - 1pm Ashok Chaurasia, University of Waterloo https://youtu.be/qFCHjNH9HLc
Fri 4 Feb 2022, noon - 1pm Nick Huntington-Klein, Seattle University https://youtu.be/dOJvE3C2KrY
Fri 11 Feb 2022, noon - 1pm Silvia Canelón, University of Pennsylvania https://youtu.be/4M8Op1oCN5U
Fri 18 Feb 2022, noon - 1pm Vincent Arel-Bundock, Université de Montréal https://youtu.be/zrBhtXwZnB8
Fri 25 Feb 2022, noon - 1pm Toronto Workshop on Reproducibility
Fri 4 Mar 2022, noon - 1pm Maria Kamenetsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison https://youtu.be/cjpoa59-obU
Fri 11 Mar 2022, noon - 1pm Irena Papst, McMaster University https://youtu.be/Oxk5Dulhnpw
Fri 18 Mar 2022, noon - 1pm May Chan and Ramses Van Zon, U of T Libraries and SciNet, respectively. https://youtu.be/92vir6ZX1mg
Thu 24 Mar 2022, 5pm - 6pm Emi Tanaka, Monash University https://youtu.be/sFdZb89Th9g
Fri 1 Apr 2022, noon - 1pm Brittany Witham, Geopolitica https://youtu.be/x7ldixTA1aE

Fall 2021

This term is mostly a special series of talks featuring University of Toronto speakers on the relationship between data science and their other field of expertise.

Date Speaker Recording
Fri 24 Sep 2021, noon - 1pm Karen Chapple, Geography, planning, cities https://youtu.be/rNRwOStrb9o
Fri 1 Oct 2021, noon - 1pm Special on 2021 Canadian Election https://youtu.be/pCwJXgR7V5k
Fri 8 Oct 2021, noon - 1pm Fedor Dokshin, Sociology https://youtu.be/QjTsDbH6MxM
Fri 15 Oct 2021, noon - 1pm Drew Stommes, Yale University -
Fri 22 Oct 2021, noon - 1pm Tegan Maharaj, Information https://youtu.be/SP3bZ3uHyTg
Fri 29 Oct 2021, noon - 1pm Josh Speagle, Astronomy https://youtu.be/fHk3Fy1TxQY
Fri 5 Nov 2021, noon - 1pm Yun William Yu, Math https://youtu.be/-1jpjM2nP2Y
Fri 12 Nov 2021, noon - 1pm Ann Glusker, Berkeley https://youtu.be/139xCz-e0tg
Fri 19 Nov 2021, noon - 1pm Radu Craiu, Statistical Sciences https://youtu.be/B7EKLFotknU
Fri 26 Nov 2021, noon - 1pm Kieran Campbell, Biomedicine https://youtu.be/PuQhyGj3G3o
Fri 3 Dec 2021, noon - 1pm Leanne Trimble, Libraries https://youtu.be/rxnShSHwBXU
Fri 10 Dec 2021, noon - 1pm Nathan Taback, Teaching https://youtu.be/99pOuO_TD5w

Summer 2021

Date Speaker Topic Recording
Fri 21 May 2021, noon-1pm David Shor, OpenLabs Political data science. https://youtu.be/_IEPKapa9_0
Fri 28 May 2021, noon-1pm Samantha Pierre, University of Toronto The Effects of a Tony Award. https://youtu.be/rFojvBN0qGk
Fri 4 June 2021, noon-1pm Heather Krause, We All Count Equity in data. https://youtu.be/Yu_l8MpKK-E
Fri 11 June 2021, noon-1pm Laura Bronner, Data scientist Quantitative editing. https://youtu.be/LI5m9RzJgWc
Fri 18 June 2021, noon-1pm Jacob Matson, Simetric, Inc. From data to dashboard. https://youtu.be/U8-6QKtWXCQ
Fri 25 June 2021, noon-1pm Laura Derksen, University of Toronto Mississauga (jointly hosted with the UTM Collaborative Digital Research Space.) Effect of Wikipedia https://youtu.be/Coz-HFesTsw
Fri 2 July 2021, noon-1pm Zachary McCaw, Google - -
Fri 16 July 2021, noon-1pm Kamilah Ebrahim, University of Toronto Trust in contact tracing apps. https://youtu.be/f_3bpEeRdhI
Fri 23 July 2021, noon-1pm Annie Collins & Rohan Alexander, University of Toronto Reproducibility of COVID-19 pre-prints https://youtu.be/_ncpTbhe8qA
Fri 30 July 2021, noon-1pm Keli Chiu, University of Toronto Detecting and explaining sexist and racist text with GPT-3 https://youtu.be/xmmoVD5zTOQ
Fri 6 August 2021, 12:30-1:30pm Ijeamaka Anyene, Kaiser Permanente Division of Research Taking the next step past standard charts. https://youtu.be/LlVf8foXUmM
Fri 13 August 2021, noon-1pm Students from the Independent Summer Statistics Community Analysis of Toronto data https://youtu.be/zkuMedB23f8
Fri 20 August 2021, noon-1pm Students from Vianey Leos Barajas’ research group, University of Toronto Sharks, lizards, and basketball! https://youtu.be/p697exbcMZE

Winter 2021

Thanks to Paul Hodgetts for the Jays-inspired sticker.

Date Speaker Topic Recording
Thu 14 Jan, 4:30-5:30pm Andrew Miles, University of Toronto (jointly hosted with the UTM Collaborative Digital Research Space.) Code, plots, and values https://youtu.be/mdjOoKT-f7E
Wed 20 Jan, 4:30-5:30pm Zia Babar, University of Toronto Derivative data security. https://youtu.be/fdVZqvECXXQ
Thu 28 Jan, 4:30-5:30pm Irene Duah-Kessie, University of Toronto Bias and fairness in health. https://youtu.be/xwWvOeSXu5o
Thu 4 Feb, 4:30-5:30pm Kathy Ge, Uber Experimentation and product design. https://youtu.be/UYzXElJTovg
Thu 11 Feb, 4:30-5:30pm Garrick Aden-Buie, R Studio Using R Markdown. https://youtu.be/Hl798H6J-bg
Mon 15 Feb, Noon-1:00pm Emily Riederer, Capital One Observational causal inference. https://youtu.be/VP3BBZ7poc0
Thu 18 Feb, 4:30-5:30pm Annie Collins, Haoluan Chen, Isaac Ehrlich, Mariam Walaa, Marija Pejcinovska, Mathew Wankiewicz, Michael Chong, Paul Hodgetts, Rohan Alexander, Samantha-Jo Caetano, Shirley Deng, and Yena Joo, University of Toronto DoSS toolkit launch. https://youtu.be/aeAXvW3K_wU
Thu 25 Feb, 9:00-5:30pm Various Toronto Workshop on Reproducibility See here.
Fri 26 Feb, 9:00-5:30pm Various Toronto Workshop on Reproducibility See here.
Thu 4 Mar, 4:30-5:30pm Petros Pechlivanoglou, The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) Research Institute Simulation and retrospective data for health economic decision making. https://youtu.be/-aZjLCPsO_w
Thu 11 Mar, 4:30-5:30pm Lucas Cherkewski, Canadian Digital Service Using publicly-available data. https://youtu.be/6vDedpF0lfg
Mon 15 Mar, 4:00-5:00pm Todd Feathers, Freelance reporter Algorithmic fairness in universities. (jointly hosted with Maryclare Griffin) https://youtu.be/Hw5viOofnC0
Thu 18 Mar, 4:30-5:30pm Sofia Ruiz Suarez, National University of Comahue Animal tracking data. https://youtu.be/GMi5nLl4wos
Thu 25 Mar, 4:30-5:30pm Alex Cookson, Muse The power of great datasets. https://youtu.be/E2aRKZczqKY
Thu 1 Apr, 4:30-5:30pm Vik Pant, Natural Resources Canada Integrating science & policy through DS & AI. -
Thu 8 Apr, 4:30-5:30pm Faria Khandaker, University of Toronto ’Mining Process Models from Email Data. https://youtu.be/2M32PbclTnE
Thu 15 Apr, 4:30-5:30pm Emily A. Sellars, Yale University Data issues in Mexican demographic history.
Thu 22 Apr, 4:30-5:30pm Aimee Schwab-McCoy, Creighton University, Ashley Juavinett, UC San Diego, Chris Papalia, St. Andrew’s College, Samantha-Jo Caetano, University of Toronto Panel on teaching data-focused topics.

Fall 2020

Thanks to Hidaya Ismail for the brilliant maple leaf and dinosaur hex stickers.

Date (Toronto time) Speaker Topic Recording
Thu, 3 Sep, 4-5pm Erik Drysdale (The Hospital for Sick Children) Using hospital data
Tue, 8 Sep, 3:30-4:30pm Sophie Bennett (Industry data scientist) UK A levels algorithm issues (jointly hosted with SRI)
Thu, 10 Sep, 4-5pm A Mahfouz, Diego Mamanche Castellanos, Hidaya Ismail, Ke-Li Chiu & Paul Hodgetts (University of Toronto) Various R packages and research developed by students
Thu, 17 Sep, 4-5pm Amber Simpson (Queen’s University) Cancer and AI
Thu, 24 Sep, 4-5pm Chelsea Parlett-Pelleriti (Chapman University) Talking to non-statisticians about statistics
Thu, 1 Oct, 4-5pm Florence Vallée-Dubois (Université de Montréal) Canadian demographics by riding (1991-2015)
Thu, 8 Oct, 4-5pm Yim Register (University of Washington Data Lab) Self-advocacy within machine learning systems
Thu, 22 Oct, 4-5pm Jeff Waldman, Leanne Trimble, Leslie Barnes, & Lisa Strug (University of Toronto) Panel on data-focused resources at U of T
Thu, 29 Oct, 4-5pm Fei Chiang (McMaster University) Data currency and applications
Thu, 5 Nov, 4-5pm Andrew Whitby (Industry data scientist) Censuses
Mon, 9 Nov, 4-5pm Tom Cardoso (Globe and Mail) Bias Behind Bars
Thu, 12 Nov, 4-5pm Kevin Armstrong (University of Toronto) Measuring poverty for NGOs
Thu, 19 Nov, 4-5pm Michael Chong (University of Toronto) High-throughput Bayesian modelling workflow https://youtu.be/xM1vf_KT76g
Thu, 26 Nov, 4-5pm Postponed
Thu, 3 Dec, 5-6pm Monica Alexander (University of Toronto) Using Facebook advertising data to estimate migration https://youtu.be/xM1vf_KT76g
Thu, 10 Dec, 4-5pm Shabrina Mardevi (United Nations Population Fund & University of Toronto) & Romesh Silva (United Nations Population Fund) Population data estimation https://youtu.be/kfmKusnGDLI
Thu, 17 Dec, 4-5pm Liza Bolton (University of Toronto), Maria Tackett (Duke University), Nathalie Moon (University of Toronto), Teon Brooks (Mozilla Firefox) Panel on teaching data-focused topics https://youtu.be/c3R6pZisvm0

Summer 2020

Winter 2020

Fall 2019

If you would like to receive invitations to the series, then you can subscribe here.