Better than I expected - Kids Report - Navneet and Sneha (Bangalore camp)

I enjoyed my time here. It was better than I Expected. I learnt many things about MS Excel , Data Science and much more. I also got to meet new people.

 - Navneet

It was a good experience  enjoyed a lot here. I learnt many things like Ms Excel, Data science etc.  

 - Sneha

(Yes, its a 3D Pie chart. Pardoned mistake. They are kids. )

Fooood - Kids Report - Shreyas and Mehul (Bangalore Camp)

I learnt a lot of new things about excel and data science. It was very fun to be with the teachers and the students. The food was tasty! :)

 - Shreyas

I learnt many things about excel as well as data science. There were many things I learnt from the teachers. And my partner Shreyas, helped me a lot and the food was very tasty!  :)

 - Mehul

Pie charts and friendship - Kids Report - V.Neha Reddy & Aatreyo Banerjee (Bangalore camp)

I liked this camp because it taught me how to analyze data and find out the ways the professionals always find out the things we want by the things we refer and buy. 
We also learned how to make pie charts and refer our data in the room & the food was very tasty & my partner for the system made me laugh a lot. Before that we had fun games & we learned on data science & how does data science work in agriculture, shopping&friends.
 - V.Neha Reddy & Aatreyo Banerjee

It will help people get more friends, the right friends - Kids report - Aryan and Anikait (Bangalore camp)

­­­­I really enjoyed the data science camp. The Excel worksheet thing really helped .It really acts like our friend predictor.  I am eager to try this at home. This was very fun. It will help people get more friends, the right friends. - Aryan

Let's not be meritocratic? - Mentor experience by Parth Arora (Bangalore camp)

1. I think the kids were smarter in Bangalore. I had two 8th graders in the Delhi camp and two 6th graders here. And even then, the speed at which they were picking up what I was telling them here in Bangalore was much more than Delhi!

2. I liked the fact that the process this time was much more chiselled. We had a clearer idea of what we are supposed to do and could make the most of time in hand.

Few thoughts, I would like to share. I dont want this test to be a meritocratic exercise. We shouldnt test students beforehand and segregate them to offer the selected ones more to digest. I strongly feel that here the idea is for kids to learn a new way of thinking together. And often it is in instances like this, when average kids, paired up with brilliant ones, learn to calibrate themselves to a higher, better way of doing things and this learning sticks with them. I may sound like a socialist but I strongly believe the objective of this camp should be collective good in the sense I described earlier.

Also, I think we should slowly move upwards to target higher age groups. We could have a more elaborate exercise for the higher secondary students first. A lot of it is also contingent on our bandwidth also but I think there is a stronger need in the upper age band.

Thanks,
Parth

Is Anush data? - Mentor experience by Paul Bajaj (Bangalore camp)

It was a great experience to be a part of the mentor group for 16 enthusiastic 6th-10th graders introducing them to the world of data science.

While we waited for a few remaining participants to join, we asked the students 'what is data'. 'Everything is data', quipped Anush. We probed him & the rest of the group further, 'Is Anush data?'. 'Yes', said Anush; 'No', said the others. The discussion continued to help us uncover an interesting definition of data, 'something about Anush is data, Anush is not data'.

The day was full of such uncovering about engaging children with data science. I had a group of four to mentor - one boy and three girls. They varied in their abilities to follow and do the exercises we gave them. Rating children on a scale of 1 to 5 on their likelihood of befriending them on basis of given information on name, gender & hobby came easy to them. As did entering the data on a spreadsheet. They understood the features & could assign classifiers too (old/new to names; indoor/outdoor to hobby). While all were able to look for basic patterns in data, 2 out of the 4 were able to understand how to build their simple predictor. 1 was able to test the accuracy of his predictor. 

Two out of the four were able to extend themselves further - see that classifications did have some subjectivity (is painting walls indoor or outdoor), look at new features that could matter more (type of hobby [arts or sports or nature] being more nuanced than its location [indoor or outdoor]), look at new classifiers (length of name than its old/new nature). 

Overall, while what they derived from the hands-on day might have been linked to their own ability, the day succeeded in giving them an opportunity to engage with data & get a pique into the world of a data scientist. I came back with several ideas on how much more we can do with this goldmine of an idea!

Thank you, team Aspiring Minds for the initiative!

Data doesn't lie - Mentor experience by Upaang Saxena (Bangalore camp)

When I first learned about the data science camp being organised by Aspiring Minds, I made an assumption that it would be for some college students. But, when I was told that students from classes 6th-10th would be attending it, my first reaction was “What? How can they understand data-science?”

But, to my surprise, the kids were smart enough to not only understand the concepts of data-science, but also know how to apply data-science in their day-to-day life.

The day started with an introductory session about Data-science. Involvement of kids in this session was a key. When a student answered that “Data is very useful in investment of a company based on stocks etc.”, I knew, that it will be an interesting session. After this, there was an ice-breaker exercise, where we grouped students in a pair of two. In this exercise, we gave students some random images of Indian scientists and there work, and asked them to match these images. They Googled it to confirm their answers and worked together.

Now, I was mentoring one group of 2 students. Both the students were very curious about what is going to happen next. We distributed them one envelope each with some papers inside. The papers contained some questions, where the student was asked to rate a picture with some random name, according to what he feels to make that person his friend. Now, we exchanged the sheets of students among themselves.

When asked about what they have done with that Questionnaire, one kid of my group of student clearly said, that “we are giving you data to make a model”. As he said, we started building a “Friend Predictor” and they were excited about it. We taught them some basic concepts of Ms-Excel. We showed them how to represent data visually with the help of bar charts and Line charts. My pair of kids were choosing the bar charts for themselves and was arguing about “why this chart is better that one”.

Suddenly, while we were helping the students to make their models, one student asked one question- “Bhaiya, how can I apply for internship in this company? I want to be part of it.” 

For me, this was the moment of the day. An 11 year old kid asking for an internship opportunity was definitely something unexpected for me.

After the model building exercise, we gathered together in conference room. We made the students’ realise what “Data” can do. Even if we don't say anything about our likes and preferences, with the help of data, we can easily predict the likes and dislikes of a person.

Then, in the later part, we asked the students to have some more of the sample sheets and check that up to what extent this “Friend predictor” is working. They were amazed to see the beauty of data and I was happy to see that they learned something.

It was a unique and wonderful experience mentoring the students. This camp made me strongly believe that education is lot more than conventional school teaching and if students in this age groups be given an opportunity to learn these concepts, they will definitely do some good for our society and help India grow by making some “data driven decisions”.

Thank you Aspiring Minds for letting me mentor the students and giving me this wonderful opportunity to interact with some minds of future.