talk-data.com

Enjoy three talks from our brilliant speakers after drinks and networking.

Sponsors: NumFOCUS Exeter Innovation Hub Butterfly Data - https://butterflydata.co.uk Mekion - https://www.mekion.co.uk

Agenda:

• 18:45 Doors open • 19:15 Talks start • 20:30 Talks finish - stick around for a drink and networking at the CUCKOO taproom across the road.

Talk #1 by Lucie Wright From South West Water

Title: Natural Capital Mapping in the Water Sector

Right now we are experiencing a step-change in the way we manage the natural world around us, thanks to a combination of public datasets combined with high resolution satellite imagery now at our fingertips. This talk is an introduction to the real world application of an AI powered GIS system in the context of habitat mapping and how humans are essential to shaping its functionality.

Talk #2 by Jamie Conn and Matt Drew From Sparx Learning

Title: Beyond multiple choice: Using LLMs for Marking and Feedback in Secondary Science Sparx Science is an online homework system used weekly by over 400,000+ students in England, part of the broader Sparx portfolio which serves 2,600+ schools and 2.2m+ students. Traditionally, open-response questions—requiring students to answer with anything from a few words to full paragraphs—have required marking by teachers. As a result, online homework systems typically relied on constrained question types, such as multiple-choice. However, Large language models (LLMs) have opened the door to reliably mark and provide meaningful feedback on open-response tasks, supporting effective retrieval practice and challenging students to think deeply. In this talk, we'll share our approach to using LLMs to automatically mark prose in Sparx Science, including: fine-tuning, prompt engineering, and everything in between.

Talk #3 by Yash Sakhuja From Performalytics

Title: Presentation on how AI can be used for fuzzy matching Showcasing how vector embeddings and unsupervised learning techniques can effectively deduplicate and merge messy customer data, illustrated through a real-world use case.

A little more about our speakers

• Jamie Conn

Leads the product development of Sparx Science. Formerly a Data Scientist developing personalisation algorithms used across Sparx products.

• Matt Drew

Data Scientist in the Modelling & Research team at Sparx. Works largely on the monitoring, development, and deployment of the various models used in our products.

• Yash Sakhuja

“I’m a Data & Insights Analyst at Performalytics, where I help e-commerce, retail, and sports brands unlock growth through data storytelling, machine learning, and AI. With a Master’s in Operations Research and Risk Analysis from the University of Manchester, I’ve delivered talks at PyData Manchester, Southampton, and Cambridge. Outside of work, I serve as the Vice President of Education at Toastmasters in Oxford, combining my love for public speaking with a passion for improv and all things data.”

CODE OF CONDUCT 
The PyData Code of Conduct governs this meetup ([https://pydata.org/code-of-conduct/](https://pydata.org/code-of-conduct/)). To discuss any issues or concerns relating to the code of conduct or behaviour of anyone at the PyData meetup, please contact the PyData Exeter organisers, or you can submit a report of any potential Code of Conduct violation directly to NumFOCUS (https://numfocus.typeform.com/to/ynjGdT)

We're back in 2024 with new speakers!

Join us at the Generator Hub to enjoy three talks from our brilliant speakers after pizza, drinks, and a chance to get to know the other guests. We will then move on to the Topsham Brewery for a chance to socialise a bit more. We look forward to welcoming familiar faces and, hopefully, many new ones.

PyData Exeter is popular, so if your plans change, please cancel your attendance on Meetup in good time to free up your space for other community members!

Agenda:

• 18:30 Doors open (ring reception)
• 19:15 Talks start
• 20:30 Moving on to Topsham Brewery

Talks:

• A Beginner's Introduction to ROC Curves for Optimising Classifiers - Tariq Rashid
• Dealing with disagreeable data: How a proliferation of atmospheric datasets can hinder policy making and why data science provides an answer - Hamish Steptoe
• Jacob Tomlinson - Using GPUs to accelerate your Pandas dataframes and other PyData code

If you would be interested in presenting at future events please submit a talk proposal: PyData Talk Proposal Form.

Also, if you have any announcements for the community, please share them

Speakers: Tariq Rashid: Tariq Rashid was originally trained as a physicist, and later gained a masters in machine learning and data mining. He’s worked in technology for 25 years, including almost a decade in central government, leading on the modernisation of technology and security. Tariq is passionate about open source, developing communities, and inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers. He led the London Python meetup, and until recently ran a children’s CoderDojo Cornwall and the Data Science Cornwall community, as well as the London based Algorithmic Art group which grew to over 4,500 members. He also writes books on machine learning and creative computing, one of which has been translated into 6 languages. He is currently developing Digital Dynamics, a new business helping organisations ensure their use of data and automation through machine learning is safe, fair and ethical.

Hamish Steptoe: Hamish Steptoe is an Applied Scientist at the Met Office, using statistics and data science to understand the impacts of weather and climate change around the world. His work focuses on informing decision making for climate resilience by engaging with international partners and stakeholders and supporting capacity development of provider and user organisations in low- and middle-income countries.

Jacob Tomlinson: A senior software engineer at NVIDIA, his work involves maintaining open source projects in the PyData ecosystem including RAPIDS and Dask. He also tinkers with kr8s, a Kubernetes library for Python, in his spare time.

Sponsors: DigiLab, University of Exeter

CODE OF CONDUCT The PyData Code of Conduct governs this meetup (https://pydata.org/code-of-conduct/). To discuss any issues or concerns relating to the code of conduct or behaviour of anyone at the PyData meetup, please contact the PyData Exeter organisers, or you can submit a report of any potential Code of Conduct violation directly to NumFOCUS (https://numfocus.typeform.com/to/ynjGdT).