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Excel and Calculator workshop for first year undergraduates of Faculty of Applied Sciences, USJ is organized by the Statistics Society of University of Sri Jayewardenepura.

This will be a great learning point to understand and practice different calculation techniques, shortcut formula and basic features of your calculator and as well as Excel.

*Date – Sunday, 25th July 2021*
*Time : 3.00 p.m onward
*Via: Zoom platform*

If you are interested, click the link below to register!

https://forms.gle/yfTsgDkB42FtmscA7

Have you ever felt anxious trying to find a “final-final-edited-version4” file in a sea of “final”s and “version”s? Or maybe you were asked by your supervisor to go back and work on a previous version of your project file. The answer is most likely a “yes”. We often face dilemmas trying to understand the edits that you or your teammates have done to certain files throughout the project timeline and why particular decisions were taken midway to change the game plan. This often pauses the ongoing actions of the team since now they have to go back to square one and work their way up while manually recording every review and change. Hence tracking the versions of files in a directory is a much needed facility especially for data evangelists of today. This is why we, the Statistics Society of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura decided to take the plunge to start making our aspiring Statisticians’ lives easier by introducing to them the world of Git.

Git fundamentals session was held on the 18th of July,  04:00 PM onwards via Zoom with over 100 participants arriving to learn about Git and how to start using it for their own projects. The speaker of the session was Mr. Adithya Narasinghe (Deep Learning Engineer at labml.ai, Consultant Software Engineer at oDoc) who took an unconventional approach in making the session fun and engaging to all its participants. The session started off by him explaining why git is necessary, with the reason being that tracking the version of your documents and files is essential to reduce unnecessary clutter and to understand the changes made to the versions of your document. Then a fun, interactive kahoot session organized by him tested the knowledge of the audience based on what he had discussed, where most of the participants gave correct answers and scored points. He pointed how everyone has at some point used version controlling systems such as Google Docs or Google Slides etc. even without explicitly knowing what they were. And finally he ended his insightful workshop with a hands-on session on setting up git and connecting to github to perform a variety of tasks from committing changes to making pull requests on github.

We thank Mr. Adithya Narasinghe from the bottom of our hearts for accepting our invitation and choosing to educate an aspiring audience and inspire them to discover new approaches to upgrade their workflows. Our gratitude also extends to the Senior Treasurer of the society, Dr. Rajitha Silva for consistently inspiring and encouraging us to take risks and be daring in the journey of distributing this much needed knowledge. Moreover, we thankfully acknowledge the immense support given by Mr. Janith Wanniarachchi,, the President of the Statistics Society who not only moderated the session by creating an interactive space between the speaker and the audience but guided us through the entire process to ensure a seamless execution of the project. This project would not have acquired this level of success if it weren’t for the dynamic team that includes Mr. Rajitha Lakshan, Ms. Rashmi Jayasekara and Ms. Chalani Pradeepika, who committed diligently behind the scenes to ensure the triumph that we have achieved. We are indebted to all their support and commitment throughout the project and beyond.

And finally, we thank all fellow data enthusiasts who participated in this insightful session and who keep motivating us to do what we do!

Slides are available at;

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UARBFWynWp_trK7ty16jv7H1fAmc50C3FVTvcEzKObo/edit?usp=sharing

Written by : Maleesha Panangala

Editor

Statistics Society of University of Sri Jayewardenepura

Keep in touch with us at; Facebook | LinkedIn

In a world where an average of more than 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is generated by people each day, the decision making processes of all organizations are bound to run as smooth as silk (in theory). But the abundance and nearly-limitless accessibility of this data have proven to be counter productive in choosing the right approach of data and information representation to make insightful decisions. However, as intriguing as it is to become a compelling data-driven storyteller, the transformation of data and information into visual context is a delicate art to master. This is why, as the Statistics Society of University of Sri Jayewardenepura with a duty to inspire the future Statisticians to achieve academic and corporate excellence, we decided to take the first dive into Data Visualization on 16th July, 2021 from 5.00pm onwards.

The data visualization workshop was deemed as the stepping stone of Pearl Viz ‘21, the Data Visualization competition organized to be held in August by the Statistics Society with the participation of both internal and external university undergraduates who posses a knack for experimenting with data to arrive at insightful conclusions and recommendations. The speaker of the session was none other than our very own Mr. Janith Wanniarrachchi, President of the Statistics Society, trainee data analyst at Trabeya, a humble contributor of two R packages maintained by Dr. Thiyanga Thalagala and above all a significant inspiration for all data science enthusiasts in the Statistics Society and beyond.

The session took place over Zoom with 60+ active participants comprising undergraduates from University of Sri Jayewardenepura and other universities representing various study areas in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics). Among the discussed topics, understanding the rationale behind “Why am I choosing this visual cue to convey this particular data or information” played a significant role in educating the participants to take an inquisitive and mindful approach when choosing the best visualization that fits the purpose. Moreover, the disclosure of a plethora of easy-to-understand and user-friendly software anyone can learn in record time and where and how to obtain the data required for the analysis was especially helpful to all budding data scientists. After pointing out the common pitfalls that anyone can encounter in their journey with data, the session ended with an informative demonstration of creating insightful visualizations related to the musical journey of American singer and songwriter Pink on Google Data Studio.

While marking the end of a successful session of a series of informative and interactive data visualization events, we express our heartfelt gratitude to our beloved Senior Treasurer, Dr. Rajitha Silva for being our pillar of strength, encouraging us to step into the unknown while providing an unceasing level of support and strength. And of course to our wonderful speaker for the session, Mr. Janith Wanniarachchi, President of the Statistics Society, thank you for taking your valuable time in addressing a topic crucial yet not talked about very often in the data science arena. The reason behind this fruitful attempt remains as the agile organizing committee of Pearl Viz ‘21 along with each and every board member of the Statistics Society who consistently dedicate themselves in adding value to the Statistics Society and all its projects.

Finally, thank you for joining in on the session, for your participation is what pushes us to do great things!

Slides are available at; https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/19v6ngh-fiVCoybVemLfqg01a4bsVgnrIwiVq7gWEYxs/edit?usp=sharing

Datasets used in the demonstration;

Pink’s song features;

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gsuv99ESekJg3-jt80TTvnk2b1qa6QZc4_rRUZD2Dd4/edit?usp=sharing

Pink’s songs

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cfYmRDVPicqLwOA5lDw4URkE1xfZzVyGU6YZRE_yAyQ/edit?usp=sharing

Written by : Maleesha Panangala

Editor

Statistics Society of University of Sri Jayewardenepura

Keep in touch with us at; Facebook | LinkedIn