Invited Speech: Data Analytics and (Interpretable) Machine Learning for Social Good

In recent years, in all contexts of our lives, we have seen a real explosion of data. From a research standpoint, data processing needs have increasingly become common in an ever growing number of applications, with potential benefits not only in our work but also in our lives: the need not just to acquire, store and perform modest operational tasks but also to analyze and properly interpret data. In this talk, we consider some of the hottest and most demanding scenarios in our daily lives, which include: medical analytics to improve the quality of life of the elderly and reduce health care expenses; social network analytics for enhancing cultural heritage dissemination; exploration of work datafication potential in improving the management of human resources (HRM); game analytics to foster Computational Thinking in education. We describe the recent findings we have obtained in our research in these contexts using the latest technology for data analytics, including interpretable machine learning, and discuss the consequences and directions for the future.