UC Berkeley’s D-Lab is a social science data laboratory at UC Berkeley that helps undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff conduct data-intensive research. It serves as a comprehensive support center focused on advancing world-class research in data-intensive social science and humanities.
It recently published some great articles including:
- Predicting the Future: Harnessing the Power of Probabilistic Judgements Through Forecasting Tournaments, by Christian Caballero. From the threat of nuclear war to rogue superintelligent AI to future pandemics and climate catastrophes, the world faces risks that are both urgent and deeply uncertain. These risks are where traditional data-driven models fall short—there’s often no historical precedent, no baseline data, and no clear way to simulate a future world. In cases like this, how can we anticipate the future?
- Decision-Making Under Pressure during My PhD: Lessons from whale songs and ocean noise, by Jaewon Saw This blog post shares a story from a field experiment using Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) to detect whale vocalizations in Monterey Bay. Most of the data got overwhelmed by noise from boat engines, wave motion, and cable instability. On the final day, a spur-of-the-moment decision to add loops to the fiber optic cable dramatically improved signal quality.
ScienceIT at Berkeley Lab has partnered with D-Lab to offer our workshops to you. Following is a list of workshops on Python, R Programming, and Git Fundamentals. To register for the workshops listed below, click on the link below to read the description, and then click the link to register via the partner portal for your organization.
If you cannot attend the workshop live, you can receive a recording of it via email 24-48 hours with a recording of the workshop after the workshop (or workshop series) has completed as long as you register ahead of time.
Following is a list of the June workshops:
1. Excel Data Analysis: Introduction – Monday, June 2 | 1pm-4pm
- This is a three-hour introductory workshop that will provide an overview of Excel, with no prior experience assumed. Attendees will learn how to use functions for handling data and making calculations, how to build charts and pivot tables, and more.
The workshop includes a lecture-style walkthrough of each concept, combined with challenge problems to apply each concept to a real-world data analysis application. Instructors and TAs will provide support for students using Excel on either Windows or Mac, as well as for students using Google Sheets. - Date/Time:
- Register Here
2. Python GPT Fundamentals – Tuesday, June 10 | 2pm-4pm
- Description: This workshop offers a general introduction to the GPT (Generative Pretrained Transformers) model. No technical background is required. We will explore the transformer architecture upon which GPT models are built, how transformer models encode natural language into embeddings, and how GPT predicts text.
- Register Here
3. R SQL Fundamentals – Thursday, June 12 | 10am-12pm
- Description: In this workshop, we provide an introduction to using SQL to query and retrieve data from relational databases in R. First, we’ll cover what relational databases and SQL are. Then, we’ll use different packages in R to navigate relational databases using SQL.
SQL is a viable option for anyone working with a large dataset. For this reason, SQL is a must-skill if you intend to work with big data or data-intensive organizations. The workshop aims to demonstrate that SQL is easy to learn, if you already know how to use the dplyr package in R. This will be a very hands-on workshop, with live coding. - Register Here
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