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<\/a><\/p>\nThe workshop began in earnest on Monday with a meeting with the Jos\u00e9, followed by introductions and a plan for the week.\u00a0\u00a0 There was time for a quick trip to the local shops to buy some souvenirs at lunch and the rest of the day was taken up with Julian and Karim delivering a workshop for delegates from three departments in the Ministry who learnt about reading and manipulating data, creating plots, and applying linear models, decisions trees and random forests amongst other things.<\/p>\n
After the workshop, the students were given a tour of Asunci\u00f3n, and this also gave them a chance to get to know Laura Oporto better, a Paraguayan student who will be joining the SAMBa programme as part of cohort 5 this October. Laura joined the group for the whole week and got a taste of what is to come next year whilst also making valuable contributions to the week\u2019s work herself, not least as one of a few in the group to speak both Spanish and English.<\/p>\n Part way through the workshop, the group split into two, with Karim, Malena and Kevin (who had concealed his knowledge of Spanish until this point) working with a Spanish speaking team to clean the two survey datasets and to create a common set of variables that could be used for model building and prediction.\u00a0 Julian, Marcus and Teo continued the statistical teaching with some more advanced topics with the English-speaking group, including further statistical methods and a workshop on machine learning and image processing led by Teo and Marcus.<\/p>\n One lunchtime the team all became multi-millionaires (in Paraguayan Guarani at least) as they cashed the cheques to cover the cost of the hotel.\u00a0\u00a0 Phones and cameras were banned in the beautiful grand old bank this was collected at, so there is sadly no evidence of this moment. This was perhaps for the best though, as Julian discovered that knives were also banned as he tried to get past the armed security with his trusty penknife. \u00a0Anyway, the guards believed his story that it was just for opening difficult bottles of Baileys and so we were on our way.<\/p>\n The group was very well hosted in the evenings, including one that started with a bar crawl around some of the more picturesque parts of Asunci\u00f3n including one modelled on a \u2018speakeasy\u2019 from the prohibition era in the US. Unfortunately amidst the excitement of the week our hosts had forgotten to research a fact needed to get in, the answer the question \u2018Who was the first presenter of the Oscars in 1929?\u2019 Not to worry though, why travel with a Professor if not for moments like this, and Julian stepped in and confidently with the answer \u2018James Cagney\u2019 and the bouncer moved away from the door and let us pass. \u00a0The quiz buffs amongst you might know the answer is actually Douglas Fairbanks, so we can only assume he\u2019d been tipped off either that Julian was an eminent Professor, or perhaps that he was still carrying his knife.<\/p>\n Wednesday was the 1st<\/sup> of August, when in Paraguay it is traditional to drink \u2018carrulim\u2019 in the morning, made of sugar cane, rum and lime to keep in good health and wealth through the winter months. Mostly the morning drinking didn\u2019t hit productivity too badly, but we did suspect Karim had taken one too many sips when he started trying to crack the safe outside the workshop rooms.<\/p>\n The workshop also continued at pace and once the data cleaning was done Malena also translated the more advanced statistical topics into Spanish and delivered them to her half of the group.\u00a0 In the evening the team met the British Ambassador to Paraguay for coffee and were also treated to a home cooked dinner at the Minister\u2019s house, though nobody told Karim that he would have to do the cooking\u2026<\/p>\n On the final day the groups came back together to apply what they had learned and competed to find the best fitting model for the data.\u00a0\u00a0 Very close to the end of the day, Rafa was in the lead, having fitted a model with the lowest RMSE for the test data, but Julian came through at the last minute with what can only be described as a very sneaky GAM to win his own prize.\u00a0\u00a0 Time for a few presentations and one final outing to some local bars before saying farewells and heading back home.<\/p>\n We would like to take the chance to thank everyone who made this trip possible.\u00a0\u00a0 Thank you in particular to Jos\u00e9 Molinas for the vision and inspiration to set the partnership in motion, to Rafa and Angie and everyone else in Paraguay who made us feel so welcome whilst we were there. Also to the Ministry of Planning and the British Embassy in Paraguay for their support of the project and to the University of Bath\u2019s Alumni fund whose generous support allowed students from SAMBa to travel along with the academics to provide assistance.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n