HSAM UN2901 Data: Past, Present, Future

Data and data-empowered algorithms now shape our professional, personal, and political realities. This course introduces students both to critical thinking and practice in understanding how we got here, and the future we now are building together as scholars, scientists, and citizens.

The intellectual content of the class will comprise

• the history of human use of data;

• functional literacy in how data are used to reveal insight and support decisions;

• critical literacy in investigating how data and data-powered algorithms shape, constrain, and manipulate our commercial, civic, and personal transactions and experiences; and

• rhetorical literacy in how exploration and analysis of data have become part of our logic and rhetoric of communication and persuasion, especially including visual rhetoric.

While introducing students to recent trends in the computational exploration of data, the course will survey the key concepts of "small data" statistics.