Christien Kelly ’20 a data analytics major with a psychology concentration shares insights he gained during his internship at Harm Reduction Ohio and research that combined his data analytics skills with his interest in politics.
On Data and Political Bias
My senior research has been challenging. I wanted to create an algorithm that could read a news article and place it into a political category. However, I had never worked with “natural language processing” before. It took about two months of research and learning to find the right approach to the project, but things are going smoothly now.
The Reward
Internships validate the hours I’ve spent learning in class, as well as refine my personal interests in the field. Of all the internships I have participated in, Harm Reduction Ohio, a nonprofit that supports drug policies based on science and human rights, was the one I felt most connected to.
Although a lot of the analyses that I did were exploratory, using algorithms I was unfamiliar with, I felt as though I was doing meaningful work. The numbers in a list of data are representations of something that has happened or is happening in the world around us. At Harm Reduction Ohio, this is something that is emphasized daily. The Quiet Creep of Data
Data is everywhere, and it’s important for the big picture, but after studying data analytics and interning in the field, I can no longer look at artifical intelligence devices without evaluating their ethicality and best practices.
