Statistics and Data Science training to build research capacity to address societal problems in Mongolia

蒙古国是一个面积大、人口少的发展中国家。自共产主义垮台以来，蒙古在发展有效的公务员制度和产生解决现代社会问题的专门知识的大学系统方面都遇到了困难。收集了大量信息，但各机构和利益攸关方缺乏从这些数据中提取知识并将其有效用于公共利益的经验。我们提出了一个讲习班方案，培训蒙古学者、公务员和其他利益攸关方使用统计学、机器学习和数据科学。该方案将利用蒙古公共机构积累的真实数据，针对当前蒙古最紧迫的一些社会挑战进行定制。这将确保分享的技术知识不是抽象的，而是有可能对蒙古社会产生直接影响的应用。该方案将分为4个阶段。在第一阶段，我们将找出问题并收集数据。我们拥有之前与蒙古合作的优势，这将提供一个先发制人的机会。在第二阶段，我们将在蒙古首都乌兰巴托进行为期两周的培训。这将由专家学者在训练有素的博士生的支持下进行。教学将是高度互动的，使用现代教学技术，以适应参与者以往经验的多样性以及英语语言能力的多样性。巴斯大学的研究生将在蒙古人学习的过程中发挥重要的教学和互动作用。该小组以前有过向巴拉圭发展部的公务员数据科学家提供类似活动的经验。这方面的最佳做法将纳入在蒙古的交付。在第三阶段，四位领先的蒙古利益相关者将访问巴斯一周，参加巴斯的创新一体化智库(ITT)之一。后者是一个独特的交互式研究培训讲习班，已经为巴斯的统计应用数学博士培训中心(Samba)开发并多次使用。这类研讨会的基本原则是，在工业或公共部门接受现实世界的挑战，并通过一个久经考验的促进过程，提炼出精心设计的数学研究问题，这些问题可以转化为积极和合作的研究项目。巴斯的ITT将使用前面描述的特定蒙古数据和社会问题作为其起点挑战。这也将涉及更多的巴斯学者和(桑巴)研究生，他们将对前面提到的提炼出有形数学问题的过程做出贡献并从中学习。巴斯数学科学系已运营了9个ITTS，并在伴随的资金支持下产生了各种新的研究项目，在提供ITTS方面有着良好的记录。最后阶段将是对乌兰巴托为期一周的访问，以进一步推动蒙古问题的研究议程，将这些问题反馈给ITT，由广泛的蒙古利益相关者以及巴斯学者和博士生参加。在整个过程中，我们将与我们的蒙古伙伴保持电子沟通，以促进研究的指导和进展。在计划结束时，我们将培训一批蒙古学者和公务员，使他们了解统计和数据科学。我们将利用他们的数据对一系列蒙古问题有更深入的了解。知识将被转移，因为学者将能够将其传授给他们的学生，而公务员将发展出数据驱动的政策制定技能。

Mongolia is a developing country that is large in area but small in population. Since the fall of communism, Mongolia has experienced difficulty in developing both an effective civil service and a university system that generates the expertise to solve the problems of a modern society. Much information is gathered but institutions and stakeholders lack the experience to extract knowledge from this data and use it effectively in the public interest. We propose a programme of workshops that will train Mongolian academics, civil servants and other stakeholders in the use of statistics, machine learning and data science. The programme will be customised to work on some of the current most pressing Mongolian social challenges, using real data accumulated by Mongolian public institutions. This will ensure that the technical knowledge shared is not abstract but applied with the potential for immediate impact on Mongolian society.The programme will have 4 stages. In the first stage we will scope out the problems and assemble the data. We have the advantage of our prior collaborations with Mongolia which will already offers a head start. We follow this in the second stage with a two week session of instruction in the capital of Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar. This will be given by expert academics with the support of well-trained doctoral students. The instruction will be highly interactive using modern teaching techniques to accommodate for the diversity in previous experience of participants as well as diversity in English language ability. Graduate students from the University of Bath will play a significant role in teaching and interacting with the Mongolians as they learn. The team has previous experience in delivering similar activities to civil service data scientists at the Paraguayan Ministry of Development. Best practice from this context will be integrated into the delivery in Mongolia. In the third stage, four leading Mongolian stakeholders will visit Bath for a week to attend one of Bath's innovative Integrative Think Tanks (ITT). The latter is a unique interactive research training workshop that has been developed and already used multiple times for Bath's EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Statistical Applied Mathematics (SAMBa). Such workshops are based around the principle of taking real world challenges in industry, or in this case, the public sector, and, through a tried and tested process of facilitation, distilling out well-formulated mathematical research questions that can move forward into an active and collaborative research projects. The ITT in Bath will use as its starting challenges the specific Mongolian data and societal problems described earlier. This will also involve a larger number of Bath academics and (SAMBa) graduate students who will contribute to and learn from the aforementioned process of distilling out tangible mathematical questions. Having run nine ITTs, and with the accolade of generating manifold new research projects with accompanying funding support, the Department of Mathematical Science at Bath has a strong track record in the delivery of ITTs. The final stage will be a week long visit back to Ulaanbaatar to further advance the research agenda on the Mongolian problems by feeding them back into an ITT attended by a wide spread of Mongolian stake-holders together with Bath academics and doctoral student. Throughout, we will be in electronic communication with our Mongolian partners to advance the instruction and progress on research.At the end of the programme, we will have trained a group of Mongolian academics and civil servants in statistics and data science. We will have advanced understanding on a range of Mongolian problems using their data. Knowledge will be transferred in that the academics will be able to pass it on to their students and the civil servants will have developed data-driven policy making skills.