A team of students from the University of Bucharest has developed “The map of chances in life”, project designated as great winner of the cross-disciplinary UB hackathon HackTheNews, competition which took place in December 2023.
The initiative received wide media coverage, being one of the main subjects in the newspaper Libertatea (article „HARTA ȘANSELOR ÎN VIAȚĂ. Cum influențează locul în care trăiesc calitatea vieții românilor”), content which was then posted on other news websites.
Thus, Mălina Andronache and Andreea Stanciu, 3rd year students at the UB Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences, and Radu Mihai, Mihai Duzi and Mihai Grigore, students at the UB Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Natural Language Processing Master (NPL), have carried out an analysis which shows how a person’s chances in life differ according to where they live. The complex study comprises data such as life expectancy, unemployment rate, the average median salary and the results obtained at national exams.
Modern methods and work instrument and excellent collaboration
After correlating numbers, information, data, the members of the UB team have shown that the life of a person is highly influenced by the family he is born in, the hospitals he is treated in, the professors who teach him in school, other aspects concerning the place where the person is born. In order to finalize the project “The Map of Chances: Your life depends on where you live”, the UB students used a web-scraping program – an automated data extraction instrument-, and they further processed the information using a data analysis app.
We used web scraping and file scraping to collect data on the counties of Romania from official websites, for example that of the National Institute of Statistics. We used this data, converted in a json file, to generate graphics and maps with explanatory notes, in order to compare the chances of the people living in each county, underlined Radu Mihai, master’s student at UB Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science.
The correlation between unemployment and poor results at national exams
One of the conclusions of the analysis elaborated by the UB students is that, in the counties with a high rate of unemployment and small incomes, pupils score poor results at national exams, and life expectancy is lower. Moreover, successes or failures at national exams are influenced by a wide range of factors, and quality of life is strongly associated with education.
At the same time, the team has demonstrated that in the Romanian counties with low incomes and high rates of unemployment, life expectancy is also lower. On the opposite end, in the areas where income is higher, unemployment is lower and life expectancy is higher.
The UB HackTheNews Competition, a cross-disciplinary contest that awards projects with social impact
Between 10 and 17 December 2023, the University of Bucharest was the host and organizer of the interdisciplinary hackathon that reunited almost 50 students from Computer Science, Journalism, Philosophy and Computer Science, who worked in mixed teams to create projects with social impact. Within the competition, the juries designated “The Map of Chances: Your life depends on where you live” the best project submitted in the competition.
The event was organized by a team coordinated by lecturer Marius Dumitran, PhD, teaching staff at the UB Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, and associated professor Andrada Fiscutean at the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences of the University of Bucharest, with support from the Association of Students in Mathematics and Computer Science (ASMI).
The hackathon had two juries. The technical evaluation of the projects was done by Ovidiu Mihalcea (Misreport.ro programmer), Radu Diță (chief architect at Softbinator), and Cristian Dascălu (content creator and entrepreneur). The jury specialized in Journalism comprised Cristina Radu (journalist for Libertatea and Școala 9), Cristian Lupșa (ex chief-editor for DoR, associated lecturer at the Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences), Cătălina Albeanu (journalist for Free Press Unlimited) and associate lecturer Gheorghe Anghel, PhD, (teaching staff at UB Faculty of Journalism and Communication Sciences).
More information about UB’s HackTheNews and “The Map of Chances” is available here.
SECŢIUNE ACCESIBILIZATĂ PENTRU PERSOANELE CU DIZABILITĂŢI DE VEDERE
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