Amy’s data science club was founded in her sophomore year of high school and has been going strong ever since.
Amy began this club because she believed that “data science is a buzzword, and AI is very big right now.” Although there has been lots of news around the topic, “lots of high schoolers are not sure about the topic and that they don’t have many resources.” Amy’s goal for this data science club was to promote outreach in data science because not many people are aware of the opportunities and resources that those high schoolers needed to excel in data science.
Amy first got into data science when she attended a Stanford summer camp in her freshman year of high school. The camp was an intro to data science. She says that “data science is a big part of AI and that it is a very difficult thing to learn.” To help her, she tools many classes that would help her with data science, such as AP Statistics and Computer Science courses, and even though they were challenging classes because she was so passionate about the topic, they ended up helping her become very familiar in data science and also helped a lot with her data science club in school.
When asked about what the most challenging part about running her school club was, she said the hardest part was how to get the club’s feet off the ground. The club started with ten members, but she was helped a lot by her close friends. They helped by attending her club and spreading the word about the club to raise its awareness. Then the club started to grow, and now there are about 50 participants. And since the data science club is getting bigger, they decided to branch into many different data science topics. For example, many students were interested in sports, so they branched off into a sports data science branch that mainly focused on sports analytics.
A typical day in Amy’s club would always vary because there are many things to do. Each day the club would do a presentation, and workshops, give lectures, give data science concepts, and even have speakers or researchers to help speak at the club. Some of those speakers come from prestigious universities such as Yale.
One example of a project that they have done in the data science club is that they made a course calculator, which is a calculator that estimates the amount of time you will spend on homework and projects for whichever class you take. And this calculator information is based on tons of surveys sent out by the club to determine the amount of time it takes for each high school course.
Amy’s favorite part of her data science club is seeing how so many people are passionate about a topic that she is also passionate about and seeing how so many people are connecting and growing through data science. Amy’s friends and family also played a huge role in this club because Amy’s friends would always have her back; if she were ever sick, they would fill in for her, her friends would always help her promote her club, and they were always there for her when they needed support.
Reported by GYP Outreach team member
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