Recorded lecture: Citizen Science and the Data Avalanche

Stephen Serjeant, Professor of Astronomy, recently gave an evenning lecture as part of our 'Open University at 50' celebrations entitled 'Citizen Science and the Data Avalanche'. You can catch a recording of his talk here.

Talk abstract:

Did you know people are better at classifying tasks then computers?

Can crowdsourcing help us to classify data of the universe?

Astronomy and particle physics have begun a new data-rich era of discovery, from finding warps in space and time to new particles in accelerators. But the data avalanche is so fast, so large and so complex that it’s a challenge for computing. Artificial Intelligence regularly offers no easy solutions. Humans are still often much better than AI at classification tasks. This has led to a new way of doing science: crowdsourcing, with the help of citizen science volunteers. This gives members of the public a genuine and valuable participation in scientific discovery, and there is a huge public appetite for taking part. Stephen Serjeant, Professor of Astronomy, will show you how you can join in, and review some of the highlights of our citizen science on the leading crowdsourcing platform, the Zooniverse.