Data Science Consulting Terms of Service

Overview

The Data Science Consultant Service provides help through consultations on data analysis, visualization, machine learning, and data science tools. Help is available to all NC State affiliates (student, staff, and faculty), and our staff strives to provide quality advice, information, and assistance. By making use of our services, patrons are agreeing to follow all expectations and guidelines listed below.

The Data Science Consultant Service provides consultations specifically for data science and data visualization work. The core technologies supported are R, MATLAB, Python, and GIS software (ArcGIS, QGIS), but our consultants have expertise with a wide variety of computing tools. We can assist you with issues that you may encounter with respect to data preparation (importing, merging, and cleaning data), analysis (implementing statistical tests), and results (understanding the output). We can also help you select the best package for your task, interpret error messages, and locate documentation and further resources.

General Expectations and Guidelines

  • Student patrons of all Libraries services must abide by the Code of Student Conduct.
  • Our consulting model is designed for short consultations (30 min). These appointments focus on strategies for data finding, connecting you to resources to support and understand methodological choices, and/or helping you execute these choices within a supported software package. If you have a request that we are not able to support, we may refer you to a more appropriate service.
  • While not intended as a step-by-step homework help or tutoring support service, the Data Science Consultant Service can help support learners in applying concepts and techniques to their own work independently.
  • Our service is free to members of the university community and we do not provide protracted, for-hire, or contract-based consultation services.
  • If your project contains classified or sensitive data, you may schedule an appointment with the Data Science Consultant Service, however patrons may not provide our consultants with access to that sensitive data at any time. To learn more about sensitive and secure data, please see the resources below:

Consultation Guidelines

Expectations for Scheduled Consultations

  • We come to our consultations with the expectation that you, the patron, have made a reasonable effort to accomplish or define your objective prior to requesting the appointment.
  • Scheduled consultations are limited to half an hour. We expect that complicated or time-intensive requests be broken into multiple consultations if necessary or directed to a longer-term campus consulting group such as the Data Science Academy.
  • If your request is time sensitive, please schedule an appointment ahead of time if possible. Scheduling an appointment reserves the consultant’s time, and ensures that you do not have to wait for assistance.
  • Please confirm your appointment and provide project files, sample data, and questions in advance, when possible. This enables our consultants to prepare and make the meeting time more productive.
  • Department Staff regularly review scheduled consultation appointments and may cancel, reschedule, or assist a consultant as necessary.

Drop-in Help

We encourage you to schedule an appointment ahead of time to avoid waiting, and to allow consultants time to prepare for your request. However, we offer “drop-in” help between appointments, and you can view day-of drop-in topics on our website. If your unscheduled consultation becomes lengthy, the consultant may need to wrap up your meeting to attend to other scheduled work. The consultant may then ask you to make an appointment for a later time to continue assisting with your request.

Statement on Repeat Consultations

While the Data Science Consultant Service strives to be as helpful as possible, if the number of requests from a patron exceeds our capacity to assist, we may refer patrons to their instructor, advisor, academic department, or outside tutoring service for further assistance. The Libraries also offer frequent workshops that provide introductions to a variety of data science topics.

Data Retention

We maintain records of our appointment requests to use in assessment and improvement processes in accordance with the Libraries’ Privacy Statement.