Posts
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New URL
Our blog is now located at the easier to remember URL: dssg-paratransit.github.io/blog
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Stream-of-Paratransit-consciousness
(My) Quick Link
Check out my Blogger.
I’m not a fan of walls, of all types - walls between people, nations, or personalities - and that is why my blog is mostly a stream-of-consciousness, very personal account of what is going on with our data science project. Buzzwords beware, because to me, they’re a huge obstacle to more people being open to the big data-fication of our many public and private data outlets. The insights, the struggles, and the pretty diagrams - feel free to check them out!
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Updates from Emily
Quick Link
My blog can be found at this page.
As of July 24th, we are in week seven. Week eight starts July 28th, and so on and so forth.
Explaining my blog
If you take a look at my blog, you might start wondering, “Hey, what is this DREU thing? Isn’t this supposed to be done through the eScience’s DSSG summer program?” You’re correct, and although I am not officially a DSSG summer intern, I am a part of the paratransit team and the DSSG program has graciously allowed me to attend all their tutorials and presentations. Technically, I am here at UW doing computer science research under my mentor, Anat Caspi, through the DREU program. DREU (Distributed Research Experience for Undergraduates) is a selective program that pairs up undergraduate student applicants with a faculty mentor from a research institution. My mentor, Anat, is the director of the TCAT center here at UW and she is the project lead for the paratransit project that TCAT is doing in conjunction with eScience’s DSSG program. So, as her student, Anat decided to put me on the paratransit project as the main part of my research for the summer.
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Plotting Rides
Recently, we’ve worked on cost per boarding metrics for individual passengers and we were interested in visualizing the physical distance that the riders traveled. Plotting the routes traveled are also helpful for understanding why some routes (“ugly rides”) are so costly for King County to provide.
In order to plot the routes, we first attach a cost to each rider. Then, we randomly sample from routes that have cost-probitive rides (“ugly rides”) and select an individual bus’ schedule for a given day. Using Google Maps API, each leg in a ride is sequentially plotted by color with green indicating cost-effective legs and red denoting cost-prohibitive legs. After plotting every leg (with information about the preceding legs layered over), a .gif is created that shows an individual bus’ schedule.
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Team Member Intros
Team lead: Dr. Anat Caspi
Anat Caspi is Director of The Taskar Center for Accessible Technology (TCAT). This initiative housed by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington is focused on translating novel research and technologies for use by populations with disabilities. TCAT also plays a role in continuing the department’s well-established engagement with access technologies and in applying universal design practices across a vast array of projects. You can find more information about Anat on her TCAT bio page.
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