Data: Dig It

Catalog description

In this class students learn how to use data. If you can learn to live with uncertainty, you can make something beautiful and true. Students will learn about data as another form of evidence. We will collect our own datasets to learn about challenges and opportunities. We will explore sources of uncertainty, and how imagination and empathy can help uncover ways that data can lead to insight or alternatively, lead one astray. We cover basic stats principles to show how even properly collected data may lead you astray; we cover design principles, we introduce technical tools for visualizing data. Students collect their own data set, share reactions to assigned readings, and find their own examples of data usage that are positive or misguided.