Applied Insights

How data science is used to solve real-world problems in business, public policy and beyond. In this section: Case Studies | Tutorials

Our Applied Insights content is in development. Interested in contributing to Real World Data Science? Check out our call for contributions.

Why 95% Of AI Projects Fail and How to Change the Odds
Viewpoints
AI

Drawing on two decades of work building AI systems for medicine discovery, Lee Clewley argues that the success of AI models rests on three principles.

Lee Clewley
Jan 12, 2026

Deploying LLMs for Nonprofits: 10 Lessons from Knowbot

The Mike Hudson Foundation has developed an LLM-powered ‘answer engine’ for non-profits. Our recent conversation with them surfaced some valuable insights for practitioners…

Annie Flynn
Dec 17, 2025

​Testing Multi-Agent Systems in the LLM Age: A Practical Guide for Data Scientists

A structured approach for testing Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) and some key questions to start you thinking critically about how your systems may be working.

Peter Capsalis
Dec 12, 2025

The Curated Data Enterprise Framework

Deploying Agentic AI - What Worked, What Broke, and What We Learned
Reproducibility
Data Analysis
Machine learning
Statistics

AI scientist and researcher Francis Osei investigates what happens when Agentic AI systems are used in real projects, where trust and reproducibility are not optional.

Aug 12, 2025

The Curated Data Enterprise Framework

Defining Purposes and Uses to Support the Development of Statistical Products in a 21st Century Census Curated Data Enterprise Environment
Public Policy
Data Analysis
Data Integration
Curation
Statistical Products

Learn about researchers’ plans to develop the Curated Data Enterprise through a use case research program.

Nov 22, 2024

A nurse assisting an older man to get up from bed in hospital

Translating the Curated Data Model into Practice - Climate resiliency of skilled nursing facilities
Public Policy
Data Analysis
Data Integration
Curation
Statistical Products

How does the Curated Data Enterprise Framework work? Take a look at our demonstration use case on the resilience of skilled nursing facilities.

Vicki Lancaster, Stephanie Shipp, Sallie Keller, Henning Mortveit, Samarth Swarup, Aaron Schroeder, and Dawen Xie
University of Virginia, Biocomplexity Institute
Nov 19, 2024

A young woman working at a laptop

Advancing Data Science in Official Statistics – What is the Curated Data Enterprise?
Public Policy
Data Analysis
Data Integration
Curation
Statistical Products

The US Census Bureau faces the challenge of addressing complex questions requiring novel datasets and sources to answer. Official statistical agencies and public- and…

Sallie Keller, Stephanie Shipp, Vicki Lancaster, and Joseph Salvo
University of Virginia
Nov 8, 2024

A laptop computer showing a variety of data visualisations.

Advancing Data Science in Official Statistics – The Policy Problem
Public Policy
Data Analysis
Data Integration
Curation
Statistical Products

In this article, we introduce a new approach for the US Census Bureau to produce statistical products using survey, administrative, procedural and opportunity data. This is…

Sallie Keller, Stephanie Shipp, Vicki Lancaster and Joseph Salvo
University of Virginia
Nov 1, 2024

A doctor takes a blood pressure reading from a patient.

Forecasting the Health Needs of a Changing Population
Health and wellbeing
Forecasting

Taking NHS usage of the 1 million people in and around Bristol, then combining with population forecasts into a modelling framework has created a sophisticated but…

Luke Shaw (BNSSG ICB), Rich Wood (BNSSG ICB, University of Bath), Christos Vasilakis (University of Bath), Zehra Onen Dumlu (University of Bath)
May 8, 2024

Dark blue square with off-white rectangle at the bottom and small random white stars, and two white circles slightly off centre. Five black dots denote two eyes and three buttons on a snowman. Two brown lines look like arms. Two red rectangles form a hat. Orange triangle as a nose, with text reading Merry Christmas at the bottom.

Creating Christmas cards with R
R
Data visualisation

The programming language R is capable of creating a wide variety of geometric shapes that can be used to construct high quality graphics – including festive images. In this…

Nicola Rennie
Dec 12, 2023

Photo of yellow chain links by Possessed Photography on Unsplash.

Deduplicating and linking large datasets using Splink
Crime and justice
Data quality
Data linkage

Robin Linacre introduces an open source tool, developed by the UK Ministry of Justice, which uses probabilistic record linkage to improve the quality of justice system data.

Robin Linacre
Nov 22, 2023

Computer monitor displaying bodycam recordings, primary colours, digital art. Created using Bing Image Creator.

Learning from failure: ‘Red flags’ in body-worn camera data
Crime and justice
Public policy
Data quality
Data analysis
Monitoring

When body-worn cameras were rolled out to juvenile correctional officers in Texas in 2018, senior leaders hoped proactive analysis of camera metadata could be used to…

Noah Wright
Nov 16, 2023

Section of article's Figure 1 graphic, illustrating the challenge of linking retail scanner data to nutrition information.

Food for Thought: Competition and challenge design
Machine learning
Natural language processing
Public policy
Health and wellbeing

From structure to setup, to metrics, results, and lessons learned, Zheyuan Zhang and Uyen Le give an overview of the design of the Food for Thought competition.

Zheyuan Zhang and Uyen Le
Aug 21, 2023

Dairy products lined up on refrigerator shelves in a farmers market in the United States.

Food for Thought: The importance of the Purchase to Plate Suite
Machine learning
Natural language processing
Public policy
Health and wellbeing

Andrea Carlson and Thea Palmer Zimmerman outline the policy issues driving the development of the Purchase to Plate Suite of data products and why linking retail scanner…

Andrea Carlson and Thea Palmer Zimmerman
Aug 21, 2023

A man is seen grocery shopping during the pandemic, looking at canned food while wearing a mask.

The Food for Thought Challenge: Using AI to support evidence-based food and nutrition policy
Machine learning
Natural language processing
Public policy
Health and wellbeing

Brian Tarran and Julia Lane introduce a collection of articles telling the story of the Food for Thought Challenge, which sought to use machine learning and natural language…

Brian Tarran and Julia Lane
Aug 21, 2023

An aerial shot of the groceries section of the Fred Meyer superstore in Redmond, WA.

Food for Thought: Third place winners – Loyola Marymount
Machine learning
Natural language processing
Public policy
Health and wellbeing

Yifan Hu and Mandy Korpusik of Loyola Marymount University describe their solution to the Food for Thought challenge: binary classification with pre-trained BERT.

Yifan Hu and Mandy Korpusik
Aug 21, 2023

Fresh vegetables on grocery store shelves.

Food for Thought: First place winners – Auburn Big Data
Machine learning
Natural language processing
Public policy
Health and wellbeing

Auburn University’s team of PhD students and faculty describe their winning solution to the Food for Thought challenge: random forest classifiers.

Alex Knipper, Naman Bansal, Jingyi Zheng, Wenying Li, and Shubhra Kanti Karmaker
Aug 21, 2023

Close up of shopping trolleys linked together.

Food for Thought: The value of competitions for confidential data
Machine learning
Natural language processing
Public policy
Health and wellbeing

The Food for Thought Challenge attracted new eyes from computer science and data science to think about how to address a critical real-world data linkage problem. And, in…

Steven Bedrick, Ophir Frieder, Julia Lane, and Philip Resnik
Aug 21, 2023

A shopper walks the aisles of a supermarket in the United States.

Food for Thought: Second place winners – DeepFFTLink
Machine learning
Natural language processing
Public policy
Health and wellbeing

PhD students and faculty from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Indiana University Bloomington describe their solution to the Food for Thought challenge: an ensemble of…

Yang Wu, Aishwarya Budhkar, Kai Zhang, Xuhong Zhang, and Xiaozhong Liu
Aug 21, 2023

A young man sits in front of a computer keyboard, surrounded by monitors and books and with computer cables covering various surfaces.

The road to reproducible research: hazards to avoid and tools to get you there safely
Deep learning
Reproducibility
Coding
Collaboration

The road to reproducibility can be a tricky one to navigate, as Davit Svanidze discovered when he set about making his bachelor’s thesis reproducible. If you are thinking of…

Davit Svanidze, Andre Python, et al.
Jun 15, 2023

Portrait of Adolphe Quetelet, superimposed on a photo of blooming purple lilacs. Quetelet portrait from Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain. Lilacs photo by Arina Bogachyova/iStock.

A demonstration of the law of the flowering plants
Prediction
History of data science
Statistics

The day a flower blooms is one of the earliest phenomena studied with systematic data collection and analysis. The prediction rule developed nearly three centuries ago is…

Jonathan Auerbach
Apr 13, 2023
No matching items