DATA SERVICES

Bits and Bytes

January 2025

Hello Data Enthusiast,

Welcome to the second issue of Bits and Bytes, the NYU Data Services newsletter!

As we gear up for the spring semester, we want to remind you that Data Services is here to help. Explore the many ways we support researchers at NYU by visiting our website, and read on to find out about upcoming events, explore our featured datasets, and get to know our team of specialists.

Upcoming Events in January and February

Image credit: NYU Data Services

Intro to Data Services: January 28

As part of Welcome Week, we’ll be hosting an Intro to Data Services session on Tuesday, January 28, 2025, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm in Bobst Library, room 619. We'll discuss software licensing, instruction, and consultations offered by Data Services to assist researchers with their data-related projects. Register for Intro to Data Services here.

💜 Love Data Week 2025: February 10-14 💜

Join us to celebrate International Love Data Week, happening February 10-14! This year’s theme is "Whose Data Is It, Anyway?" - an invitation to remember to think about where data came from before using it. At Bobst Library, Dibner Library, and online, we’ll be hosting a series of data-related events including talks, panels, and discussions on topics like data anonymization, data careers, and information governance. We’ll also be hosting a film screening of WALL-E and classes on R and Stata.

Find out more and register to attend on our Love Data Week 2025 website.

Photo credit: NYU

Data Services Workshops and Tutorials: February 17 - March 7

Looking to brush up your skills or learn something new? Take a workshop or tutorial with Data Services. Between February 17 and March 7, we’ll be offering classes on topics like finding data, programming in Python, using Git and Github, and more! Find classes and register on the NYU Libraries events calendar.

Photo credit: NYU Dibner Library

Introduction to Machine Learning Clinic Series at Dibner Library

For anyone that frequents the Brooklyn Campus, keep a lookout for a Machine Learning Clinic session taught by Fabiha, our Data Services Specialist at Dibner. The sessions will be held biweekly, starting on February 6th at 2 PM, over at Bern Dibner Library. You can register for upcoming sessions here.

Featured Datasets

UltraViolet is part of a suite of repositories at NYU that provide a home for research materials. Data Services helps NYU researchers prepare their materials for deposit in UltraViolet to facilitate open access and long-term preservation.

What's New in UltraViolet

We have a few new datasets in UV. Researchers from the Transit Costs Project at NYU’s Marron Institute have recently published Construction costs of urban rail projects worldwide, which presents comprehensive information about global transit infrastructure projects. This data was curated by our urban data student specialist, Akanksha Patil, and is part of a Data Services initiative to collect and curate urban data across NYU.

Data and Survey Questionnaires for "From Effort to Free: the Zero-Price Effect in Non-Monetary Contexts" by Liheng Xu, Yisroel Cahn, and Bining Yang includes the data underlying a paper the group submitted to an economics journal. This project, an experiment that tested chocolate candy preferences under several conditions, was funded by the Dean’s Undergraduate Research Fund and represents a collaboration between undergraduate and faculty researchers.

Got your own data, code, or other research materials? Check out our UltraViolet deposit guide and get in touch!

Data in the Library

NYU Libraries’ provides access to a range of data for non-commercial, academic research. For example, we have several text corpora you can use for text data mining (TDM), like the English Corpora dataset now available in UltraViolet.

Why do TDM? This technique can help reveal new patterns or information from a large body of work by enabling researchers to analyze thousands of documents and terabytes of data, allowing for a comprehensive look into research questions.

For more information on the data available, how to access it, and the Terms of Use, visit our Text Data Mining Research Guide.

Data Services Team Spotlight: Duyi Liu!

Photo credit: NYU Data Services

What's your name, program, and year?
My name is Duyi Liu, a second year student of M.S. in Applied Statistics for Social Science Research

What's your service area at Data Services and how long have you worked here?
I’m a Data Management student specialist and I’ve worked here since spring 2024. (almost a year!)

What do you like most about working at Data Services?
The people! Everyone at Data Services is super supportive and great to work with. We're always helping each other out, and we've become good friends too. Having such awesome coworkers makes coming to work actually fun - we get our work done but still have a good time doing it!

Describe your favorite data-related project that you've worked on.
One of the projects I really love is related to natural language processing and large language models, where my teammates and I tested different language models‘ gender biases in occupational sentiment analysis and investigated ways of debiasing.

What's your favorite place to get a meal or a snack near Bobst Library?
Artisan, they have amazing mochi milk tea and chicken wings.

Thanks for reading! We hope to see you soon either on the 5th floor at Bobst or online.

- Your friends at NYU Data Services

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