The average might be useful, but it can never describe an individual.
Tag: DataScience
The difference between climate change and the threat of nuclear war
"I grew up under the threat of nuclear war. Carl Sagan told us it was inevitable. It didn't happen, and we're not worried about nuclear war anymore, so obviously panicking about climate change is the same - in a few years we'll realise there was nothing to be scared of. It's not the crisis we think it is." I completely understand the attractiveness of this theory. "We are under threat. That's scary. But we were under threat before and that turned out to be nothing, so this one will too, right? RIGHT? PLEASE??"
Using Data Science to investigate discrimination – Part 1, Mobility
What I love about projects like this is the opportunity for students to consider issues that don't normally impact them, and then quantify them, and come up with ways to improve those numbers.
Learning to be wrong
When you penalise wrong answers, you build in a sense of shame and failure to being wrong that most people never get over. It leads to cheating, to covering up of mistakes, and to avoiding doing things where being wrong is a possibility. How about, instead, we make it the default that you assume that you will be wrong in numerous ways. We make it a fundamental part of the process to figure out those ways, and even reward the finding of those mistakes. In doing so, we give people the freedom to explore, to try new things, and, above all, to learn without fear.
Andrew Leigh on Data & Politics
"The rise of populism has been substantial across the advanced world, indeed across developing countries as well. So those of us who believe in data need to be strong proponents of the publication of those data even when it produces results that make us uncomfortable.