Young data scientists share their findings on global issues
![Participants of the Data Science Ambassadors Computer Science competition, all high school students from across the country, and its organizers pose at the end of the event at the Nuritkum Square Building in western Seoul on Thursday. [PARK SANG-MOON]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2023/03/03/ccb18007-64f0-4383-a759-98ea737b17d3.jpg)
Participants of the Data Science Ambassadors Computer Science competition, all high school students from across the country, and its organizers pose at the end of the event at the Nuritkum Square Building in western Seoul on Thursday. [PARK SANG-MOON]
Dozens of budding data scientists across high schools in Korea put their heads together to visualize data on some of the world’s most pressing problems, such as the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change, and announced their findings at a competition organized by the Ministry of Science and ICT and National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA) in Seoul on Thursday.
“We wanted to see if the government's Covid-19 emergency relief grants had driven up the prices of goods, which could leave many consumers worse off than before,” said Kim Na-yeon, a tenth grader at Dongji Girls’ High School in Pohang, North Gyeongsang, in addressing fellow participants at the Data Science Ambassadors Computer Science Program at the Nuritkum Square Building in western Seoul on Thursday.
Kim and her classmate, Kim Yu-na, presented visual analyses of prices of goods in Korea, before and after the government doled out its emergency relief grants for Covid-19.
“While we found that prices of goods did shoot up after the government provided the relief grants in May and September 2020, and multiple times throughout 2021, we also found that vaccination rates, the start of the ‘Living with Covid-19’ scheme, and a worldwide rise in oil prices also contributed to the rise in the prices of goods,” said Kim Yu-na. “What we found most difficult throughout the project was differentiating between correlation and causation, because two factors can be correlated, but it doesn’t necessarily mean one caused the other.”
This was the third year for NIPA to run artificial intelligence education programs in high schools across Korea. The program is geared toward students living outside of Seoul.
This year, the program was divided into two categories — one on big data analysis using the R program, and another building a model of a self-driving car using Python programming, a Raspberry Pi motherboard and artificial intelligence neural network programs.
Around 40 high schools from Incheon, Ulsan, North and South Chungcheong, North and South Gyeongsang, Jeju, Gangwon, Gyeonggi and South Jeolla took part in the program this year.
Students with all differing levels of past experience took part, including Go Ju-won from Bongmyeong High School in Cheongju, North Chungcheong, who was learning a computer language for the first time, and Chae Seong-hyeon of the same school who had been studying the C programming language for several years.
Park Je-ho, professor of mathematical sciences at Claremont McKenna College, led a four-week course on big data analysis for the participants, and Lee Jeong-kyu, professor of computer science at Northeastern University's Khoury College of Computer Sciences, led a course on self-driving cars.
“Some of the students took on issues that graduate students would take on, and tried to visualize data on issues very relevant to our lives,” Park said. “We are in an age and time when students from a young age should be exposed to reading and understanding data, and I hope that this program was a step in the right direction for many participants.”
The grand prize for the competition on data analysis went to two students from Onyang Girls High School in Asan, South Chungcheong, Lee Ye-won and Lee Ye-jin, who presented their findings on visualizing data on climate change effects in Korea.
“You can see in the graph here that from 1973 to 2020, the average yearly temperature in Korea has generally been on the rise,” said Lee Ye-won. “In a similar time frame, from 1981 to 2020, you can also see that the amount of time it takes for cherry blossoms to bloom, from the start of the year, has been decreasing, meaning that there was a general trend that the flowers were blooming earlier than before as the years went by.”
Adding to that their analysis of the change in sea level, as well as the dropping rates of sea ice worldwide, the team presented their findings on climate change effects worldwide.
“We knew climate change is a serious global issue, but we wanted to show how serious it actually was through the visualization of relevant data,” said Lee Ye-jin.
Three students from Incheon Electronic Meister High School, Lee Gyeom, Jeon Hyeon-min and Kim Kang-min, took home the second prize. They analyzed data on traffic accidents in Korea to visualize where traffic accidents are most likely to happen in Korea and describe what types of traffic accidents occur most frequently.
“It was a good opportunity to find out what it means to be a data scientist, a career that I am seriously considering for myself when I graduate from college,” said Kim Kang-min, an eleventh grade student at the high school. “I hope to be able to grow both the hardware and software skills to become a programming expert.”
Students who took on the autonomous car project competed by racing their model cars.
“We modeled the race several times to tweak different options, like the camera angle, location of the camera, coding and such, to find the best combination to ensure both speed and accuracy,” said Kim Jong-min of Semyeong High School in Pohang, whose team consisted of three other students from his school. “In the end, we found out that turning off the camera while fixing the code helped bring down the central processing unit usage, which helped us save power.”
The grand prize for the self-driving cars category went to a team from Daegi High School in Jeju and the second prize to a team from Incheon Electronic Meister High School.
“It’s difficult to live in this era of Covid-19, to deal with the restrictions of the pandemic,” said professor Lee. “But these students have shown that with hard work, combined with the drive and passion of youth, can lead to outstanding results. I hope that today’s experience serves as encouragement for many looking to become artificial intelligence programmers and data scientists.”
NIPA intends to continue to train students across the country in programming and computer languages for years to come.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has curtailed many opportunities for students to have global exchanges and learn from each other,” said Jung Su-jin, director of the regional software innovation team of NIPA. “We’re hoping to change that once the situation has improved, and possibly expand the program so that students of many nationalities can work on projects together and participate in the competition.”
BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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