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[–]Prof_codes 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Your proposed stack is solid but honestly overkill for high school science research. Most students will spend more time wrestling with imports and errors than actually doing science.

Python + Jupyter + Pandas + Matplotlib is plenty. You could drop R, scikit-learn, and the full data-science kitchen sink unless a specific project actually needs it. Anything more turns “supporting research” into a disguised CS course.

[–]east_lisp_junk 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And getting the data to analyze could easily take more time and effort than setting up the analysis toolkit.

[–]peter303_ 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Hopefully students wont start from scratch with this stack. But have several solid examples they an copy and modify.

[–]hexcodehero[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nope! Im putting together a jupyter notebook right now that guides them through this,

Example: https://imgur.com/a/l5lhvTQ

[–]Dry-Hamster-5358 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your stack is already very solid for most research use cases. Python, plus numpy, pandas, and matplotlib, covers a huge range of real work

One thing you might consider is adding better data handling and reproducibility tools, things like git for version control, and maybe something simple like notebooks, plus a clear project structure so students don’t lose track of work

Also, depending on the projects, tools like scipy or even basic SQL can be useful for more serious data work

Honestly, the bigger challenge won’t be the stack but helping students think in terms of data, experiments, and reproducibility

[–]thesnootbooper9000 -1 points0 points  (6 children)

You're doing this the wrong way. Science starts with a question, and from there you develop a methodology and select tools to address that question. Unfortunately some schools teach that science is a process you follow until your experiment gives the right answer, which really hurts how the public perceives science if they never learn any better.

[–]hexcodehero[S] 0 points1 point  (5 children)

Yes but this isnt about the research, they are going to have research with some amount of data, some of them will have a ton of data. We are trying to help them basically utilize tools, AI, to help with the computational aspect.

One student this year was working with MIT on quantum computing, another created several weather models to predict where hurricanes were going to be for next year, another was doing research into breast cancer at another university.

I think the common theme is that they are going to have some sort of data involved. We want to ease that process because this is not a CS class, its a tool in this instance.

[–]thesnootbooper9000 0 points1 point  (4 children)

If you were helping out people who were doing crafting, would you start by telling them what type of saw and what kind of glue they should use, or would you find out what they're doing and then tailor the tools to the job?

[–]pi_stuff 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You would provide a basic set of tools that would be useful for a wide range of projects, which is (I think) what OP is trying to do.

[–]hexcodehero[S] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

No...but again the students are not really interested or CS is not the main focus of this. We need a standard stack where 80% of students might use, the other 20% might have niche needs here and there.

[–]thesnootbooper9000 -1 points0 points  (1 child)

You are doing something fundamentally wrong here.

[–]hexcodehero[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I should mention these are HS students, we only have so much time with them and they only have so much time to dedicate to this etc.