Amherst College Data* Mammoths

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A research and learning group on "everything data" (data mining, knowledge discovery, network science, machine learning, databases, …), led by Prof. Matteo Riondato

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Amherst College Data* Mammoths

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We are a research and learning group led by Prof. Matteo Riondato at Amherst College, mostly in the Computer Science department.

We create and learn about algorithms for “everything data”:1 data mining, network science, machine learning, data science, knowledge discovery, databases, and much more. You can read more about what we do in the Q&A with Matteo for the college website.

The methods we develop often leverage randomness (e.g., sampling, statistical hypothesis testing, sketches) and offer strong guarantees on their performance.

Our research is sponsored, in part, by the National Science Foundation under CAREER award 2238693 and award III-2006765.

When we are not working together at the whiteboard, writing code, or reading papers, you can find us in courses such as COSC-254 Data Mining, COSC-257 Databases, COSC-351 Information Theory, COSC-355 Network Science, or taking an independent study course (COSC-490) with Matteo.

Data* Mammoths at work: Matteo and Conrad working on graph algorithms at the whiteboard

News

Publications with Mammoths student authors

Mammoths student/alumni authors in italics.

The Data* Mammoths in May 2024 -- Jesse Gwilliam ©️ Amherst College

Members

Alumni

The Data* Mammoths in May 2023 -- Jesse Gwilliam ©️ Amherst College

How to join

If you are an Amherst student, and are interested in mixing data, computer science, probability, and statistics, please contact Matteo. With rare exceptions, you should have taken or be enrolled in COSC-211 Data Structures. Having taken one or more courses in probability and/or statistics (e.g., STAT-135, COSC-223, MATH/STAT-360) is a plus, but not necessary, although if you haven’t, it is likely that you will get to spend a semester learning about probability in computer science, possibly in an independent study course with Matteo. Here’s an interview with a former Data Mammoth about what the experience could look like.

🦣 💜 💾 We love data!

The Data* Mammoths T-Shirt

  1. That’s the reason for the * in Data*, as X* means “everything X”, in computer science jargon.