Case studies

How data science is used to solve real-world problems in business, public policy and beyond

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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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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
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