Internship Location: Madison WI
Organization Type: Nonprofit
Policy Areas: Research
I spent the summer of 2023 conducting research under the guidance of Dr. Ross Milton, working independently on developing a machine learning strategy to a text categorization problem for an ongoing paper to be published by Dr. Milton and a colleague of his. I employed R in an effort to clean, organize, and interpret a large dataset with an eye towards “bucketing” descriptions of school construction projects, and my time at the LFS has definitely contributed to both my level of tolerance for the difficult process of learning to do what I did, and to my level of preparation for the use of a data analysis language like R, despite my low level of prior use of the software. I would absolutely recommend that other students spend the summer working with our professors, Dr. Milton in particular, if given the opportunity to do so. I learned a lot about my capacity for and best-case approach to productive struggle, and I decided I definitely do want to work closely with data in whatever career I ultimately pursue.