User:Kaitlyn Ballou
Kaitlyn J Ballou
Marquette Data Science REU Summer 2023
Mentor: Dr. Walt Bailkowski
Garden Scoping (Placeholder Name)
Week 1 (05/30/2023 - 06/02/2023)
Tuesday, May 30th:
- Attended Data Science REU orientation (1 hr).
- Emailed Mentor during lunch to set up a time to meet the next day regarding the start of our project.
- Received and read preliminary, contextual reading (.5 hr).
- Wrote out initial project thoughts, directions, and questions for mentor based on reading (3 hrs).
Contextual Reading Summary: Empowering Those Who Seek to End Hunger through Collaboration and Innovation by Ko, et al.
An application developed by Marquette students was developed as an indexing solution for Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin (FAEW)'s storage facilities based on what is in storage, how long it's been there, and if it's available to be moved. These metrics were made available to the end user to scale at any given time utilizing a web application. This technology assisted FAEW in providing fresh food to food pantries at a faster rate.
Total Hours: 4.5
Wednesday, May 31st:
- Attended a presentation on good research practices, took notes on slides (1 hr).
- Attended my first mentor meeting; introductions, evaluation of initial thoughts, assessing problems with one of FAEW's staff, directly, took notes (1.5 hrs).
Learning Notes:
Enterprise operations (P2) may or may not need an Open API, which is a means for software to be integrated on and scaled to multiple devices for ease of use, or portability.
- In expressing my interest in community gardens as a potential project implementation, I was given additional resources from Dr. Bialkowski, and Casey Hoff (staff from FAEW), which prompted me to draft a literature review of existing vacant lot to community garden programs that exist throughout Milwaukee (8 hrs). While this was an improvised paper; discussion on Thursday and Friday made clear that my personal interest in serving the Milwaukee community by developing a publicly available map tool that advertises these gardens (regardless of affiliation) for those who may not know they exist, have access to their own, or have access to local food pantry can also be used to test methods to establish better communication between FAEW storage and pantries as well as pantries and consumers relevant to the movement of product between these spaces.
Total Hours: 10.5
Thursday, June 1st:
- Continuing my work on assignments provided by Dr. Bialkowski, including reading from "Business Intelligence Guidebook" by Rick Sherman to explore the process I am to follow with regard to producing my final deliverables, and develop a project roadmap (4 hrs).
- Project roadmap developed on a google sheets file based on existing deadlines for the REU program (2.5 hrs).
- Attended a second mentor meeting (1.5 hrs) to narrow the scope of my project, settling on a project in two parts that may satisfy the interest of all parties:
Applying Aspects of Resource Mapping to Storage Operations
Part 1: Community Garden Analysis & Resource Mapping (Garden Scoping).
Part 2: Analytics solution that can be picked up to manage all communicative operations aspects (public tool to be utilized by businesses alike)...To be titled.
- Prepared a one page project proposal that detailed a means to relate Garden Scoping to operations management for FAEW (2 hrs).
Total Hours: 10
Friday, June 2nd:
- Edited my one page proposal before mentor meeting (.5 hr).
- Developed a project Gantt Chart using bullet points that were proposed during the previous day's meeting (4 hrs).
Learning Notes:
Google Charts via JSFiddle was used to code a visual representation for a Gantt Chart through html and Java Script.
Dr. Bialkowski's definition of Data Science: Comp sci, math, and personal expertise.
In my case: Comp sci, math, and environmental studies.
Environmental Studies (for reference): The application of environmental problems to multiple disciplines, including engineering, health, society, economics, and policy.
- Attended a third mentor meeting (.75 hr) discussing work done thus far, edits to be made, and a revised project scope:
Applying Aspects of Resource Mapping to Storage Operations
Exhibit A: Community Garden Literature Review (including comparison to national averages and Buffalo, NY programs with a focus on vacant lot restoration)
Exhibit B: Community Garden Analysis & Resource Mapping (Garden Scoping).
Exhibit C: Analytics solution that can be picked up to manage all communicative operations aspects (public tool to be utilized by businesses alike)...To be titled.
- Completed cursory searches for existing mapped garden locations (.5 hr). Findings included maps for gardens hosted by various companies, but were not supporting listings from programs focused on in my MKE lit review. Additionally, there is a group in Los Angeles, California that has looked into the same project I would like to complete for MKE; that is, mapping all active community gardens on a single, publicly mapped database.
Total Hours: 5.75
Week's Total Hours: 30.75
Week 2 (06/05/2023 - 06/09/2023)
Coming soon. :>
