Some Bugs Allowed
Although it feels to me like it’s been ages since my initial blog post, I was surprised to see that I started my blog just over one month ago. I was surprised that at the time of writing that post, I didn’t even know what my capstone project would entail, or whether I would even get a project that I was excited about! Thankfully, I’m able to report that I am currently working on my top project choice; developing an A.I. for predicting election results and studying the factors that influence local elections.
So far, this project has been almost entirely new ground for myself and for my team. I went into the project completely unsure of the kind of work I would be doing, or what an actual implementation of a machine learning program even looks like. To my pleasant surprise, the project has taken on a large research component and my understanding of the project has grown immensely. While the team and I are yet to begin any sort of actual development, we have had the great opportunity to conduct some fantastic research into the field, and it feels like we really have a chance to break new ground with the work that we’re conducting. Local elections such as school boards and city councils are seriously under-studied, and the small-scale variables that influence elections at this level are not well understood by many. Because of this, our application of AI to this field will provide valuable insight that has numerous different applications from journalism, academia, and may even benefit campaign stakeholders should this be an avenue we choose to pursue.
By treading new ground and working on such an exciting project, I feel as though I’m experiencing what I really love about studying computer science. The field has always drawn me in because of its open-ended nature, and I really feel like my work has the potential to benefit others which is a really neat feeling. As I said, there’s not much to share at the moment, but I’m sure I’ll have lots to add in the coming weeks as we really get to dive into the development process and begin working with our tools like Vertex AI and BigQuery to create some really cool and hopefully impactful work.
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