Thread by @emcandre

Teaching data science with real world datasets.

Course leaders on the Data Science for Design MSc @EdinburghUni thought the teaching of data science would benefit from the Masters students working with 'real world' datasets as part of their studies.
ccg.doc.gold.ac.uk/serendipityais…

@EdinburghUni I was invited along with 13 other ‘problem holders’ to the annual ‘Data Fair’ hosted by the Data Science for Design MSc.
Had just 5 mins to pitch a real world dataset for students on the course to work on in groups to tell engaging stories with as a 6wk project. Worked great.

@EdinburghUni I pitched Scotland's witches! h/t @ammienoot
Students on the Data Science for Design MSc hav been enthused for last 2yrs to surface data from @EdinburghUni's Survey of Scottish Witchcraft database (1563-1736) to Wikipedia's sister project, @wikidata, & the Linked Open Data Cloud

@EdinburghUni @ammienoot @wikidata .@karenhowie2008 showed students how best to use the original Survey of Scottish Witchcraft database and Query Design.
Essentially, it is an MS Access database created in 2003 after years of research, collating ~4000 records of accused witches in Scotland
witches.shca.ed.ac.uk

@EdinburghUni @ammienoot @wikidata @karenhowie2008 .@nicolvision & Chris Fleet @natlibscot were also super helpful👍
I facilitated the students modelling & processing the data ready to export into #Wikidata as structured linked open data.
Map of places of residence of accused witches colourcoded by gender:
tinyurl.com/yad2rpc2

@EdinburghUni @ammienoot @wikidata @karenhowie2008 @nicolvision @natlibscot Map of places of residence for accused witches with a layer for occupations
tinyurl.com/y8psj4lz
Opening up the data for further research both aided the students' learning about data science and aided our understanding of this little understood period of history.
#OpenData

@EdinburghUni @ammienoot @wikidata @karenhowie2008 @nicolvision @natlibscot Place of residence for accused witches with a layer for social class:
tinyurl.com/ybmlz3jt
We knew after 2 yrs working with the students that this was a successful model & there was much more we cud do with this dataset so in Summer 2019 we leveraged funding to host an intern

@EdinburghUni @ammienoot @wikidata @karenhowie2008 @nicolvision @natlibscot We knew that if we cud get a student with GIS skills to geolocate the places mentioned in the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft database this would be an incredibly helpful step forward as virtually evry accused witch in the database had 1 place recorded
Enter our Witchfinder General

@EdinburghUni @ammienoot @wikidata @karenhowie2008 @nicolvision @natlibscot Emma Carroll, a Physical Geography undergrad, worked work with me for 3 mths this Summer as part of an @EquateScotland scheme to give #WomenInSTEM paid placements in industry. She worked tirelessly to hunt down the sometimes very obscure historic places mentioned in the database.

@EdinburghUni @ammienoot @wikidata @karenhowie2008 @nicolvision @natlibscot @EquateScotland That took the first 6 weeks of her internship. Next step was to process the data into #linkedopendata and enrich #Wikidata with co-ordinate locations for places of residence, trial locations, places of detainment, places of death, torture techniques, manner of death and more,

@EdinburghUni @ammienoot @wikidata @karenhowie2008 @nicolvision @natlibscot @EquateScotland Emma blogged every week to demonstrate step-by-step her approach and created a new video tutorial of how to process data in bulk using the open source software, @OpenRefine.
All her work and visualisations culminated in a new website:
witches.is.ed.ac.uk

@EdinburghUni @ammienoot @wikidata @karenhowie2008 @nicolvision @natlibscot @EquateScotland @OpenRefine Emma presented her findings, 'The Wicked Findings of the Witchfinder General', at a @EdCDCS seminar hosted @EdUniMainLib on 11 September 2019.
We thought that was that, she'd done amazing work and her internship had come to an end.
media.ed.ac.uk/playlist/dedic…

However... a rogue tweet by @melissaterras about witches.is.ed.ac.uk got picked up by @TheScotsman and the story went all over:
the Guardian, Herald, Radio Scotland, Radio 4, Smithsonian, Citylab, New York Times and many many more. nytimes.com/2019/10/25/opi…

Plus STV news.
And a new BBC podcast, Witch Hunt, also.

But what was great was it was local papers picking it up. And local people looking up the accused witches who had been persecuted near them. Suddenly we got lots of emails. it was more personal now
johnogroat-journal.co.uk/news/plotting-…

A final end of year treat was to come. Data Science for Design MSc students had been inspired by Emma's work & the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft Database to create a physical map of accused witches in Scotland, lasercut from a block of wood, with Scotland burnt into its surface.

Interesting to see that the interest in telling the stories of the accused witches in Scotland continues to burn brightly (ahem) with Emma Carroll presenting on her project at the second "Remembering Scotland's Accused Witches" conference on 8 November.
eventbrite.co.uk/e/virtual-conf…