Courses

Worlds become data

Last updated: 2024-04-05

Overview

This course covers issues in the practices of translating phenomena to data and algorithmic description. What happens, what is gained, what is lost, when things that happen in the world are recorded and made into information or recorded as a document? The course explores representation, modeling, correctness, reliability, and bias in different types of data and algorithms. We will learn about diverse topics such as cultural and algorithmic bias, challenges of big data, what happens when the world is transformed into images, what are the implications of having your social status determined by data and scores on your social media profile, and what we gain or miss when we deal with geographical information systems.

To a certain extent we are wasting our time. We have a perfect model of the world---it is the world! But it is too complicated. Because of this we must simplify the world in order for it to become data. In this course we explore how we do this, and the implications.

Past iterations

• 2024
  • Syllabus
  • Student evals
• 2023
  • Syllabus
  • Student evals
• 2022
  • Syllabus
  • Student evals

Content

Week 1

• Drinking from a fire hose

Week 2

• Reproducible workflows

Week 3

• R essentials

Week 4

• Writing research

Week 5

• Static communication

Week 6

• Farm data

Week 7

• Gather data

Week 8

• Hunt data

Week 9

• Clean and prepare

Week 10

• Store and share

Week 11

• Exploratory data analysis

Week 12

• Linear models

Assessment

Quiz

• 7%
• Wednesdays, noon, Weeks 1-12
• Only best seven out of twelve count.

SQL quiz

• 1%
• Wednesday, noon, Week 6

Personal website

• 1%
• Wednesday, noon, Week 9
• Create a personal website using Quarto and make it live via GitHub Pages. At a minimum, it must include a bio and a CV in PDF form.

Tutorials

• 6%
• Wednesdays, noon, Weeks 1-12
• Only best three out of twelve count.

Term papers

• 48%
• Wednesdays, noon, Weeks 3, 6, 9
• Term Paper I: 24 January 2024
• Term Paper II: 14 February 2024
• Term Paper III: 13 March 2024
• Only best two of three term papers count.

Conduct peer review

• 3%
• Thursdays, noon, Weeks 3, 6, 9, 12
• Conduct peer review for six other term/final papers, by creating a GitHub Issue or Pull Request. Papers will be distributed by a spreadsheet---add a link to the Issue/PR to a term paper that does not have four other entries. You will only have 24 hours to do this.

Final paper

• 34%
• Wednesday, noon, Week 12 (3 April 2024)
• You must submit this paper.