Data Science is all about collecting, analysing, and communicating data to help inform actions or decisions. We all consume Data Science to some extent every day, from checking the weather app for the day’s forecast, to using a fitness tracker to track your step count. And we are all subjected to the outcomes of Data Science conducted by others, and not just in obvious cases like graphs and numbers in news reports, but also in more subtle ways like the timing of traffic lights, the choice of videos social media apps show you, or which products are placed in our line of sight in a supermarket. Data runs our lives, and it is a powerful means of understanding our world.
Sometimes people use data for the good of society: to highlight inequality or bias, improve medical outcomes or develop new technologies. Other times people use it to for personal gain: the best methods for selling more products, strategies to minimise tax, or get the most likes on social media.
And then there are the people and organisations that misrepresent data to lie, cheat, and manipulate people. (Read our blog on Scaling Scams for some ways data is used to mislead.)
ADSEI’s mission is to empower everyone, children and adults, with the data literacy and critical thinking skills to use data, rather than be used by it.
Data Science in Schools
ADSEI aims to support teachers and students to be comfortable with data – as part of science, maths, and technology, but also Geography, History, Politics, and even English.
What’s the gender balance like in the novels studied at year 12, or in reporting of science? How does Google figure out what news to show you? How does Facebook work out who you might want to connect with? What’s the traffic like on the way to the airport? These are all data stories.
How do we solve problems? How do we communicate data effectively? How do we evaluate the data stories other people tell us to be sure that they’re both accurate and valid? These are all questions we can ask students to get them thinking more critically about data and the world around them.
We need to embed these skills in the way we teach our kids. ADSEI empowers teachers to do that by supplying resources, training, and real datasets, and by connecting them with other teachers, academics, and data science professionals to give kids authentic opportunities to engage with data science.
Data Science in Society
Adults also need Data Literacy and Data Science skills. How can we tell when a graph on the news has been manipulated to tell a different story? How can we tell when someone is claiming a lie as fact and using dodgy data to back up their claim? How can we accurately understand risks such as:
- the risk of side effects from a vaccine vs. the risk of serious illness from a disease,
- the risk of pouring all your money into the latest cryptocurrency,
- the risk of eating certain foods…
How do we interpret the risk for ourselves, independently of the way the information is presented?
Our goal is a society where everyone has the skills to think crtically about data, and to separate fact from fiction and sanity from sensationalism.