My colleague Waheed Bajwa and I are teaching a Rutgers Byrne Seminar for first-year undergraduates this fall. The title of the course is Data: What is it Good For? (Absolutely Something), a reference which I am sure will be completely lost on the undergrads. The point of the course is to talk about “data” (what is it, exactly?), how it gets turned into “information,” and then perhaps even “knowledge,” with all of the pitfalls along the way. So it’s a good opportunity to talk about philosophy (e.g. epistemology), mathematics/statistics (e.g. undersampling, bias, analysis), engineering (e.g. storage, transmission), science (e.g. reduplication, retraction), and policy (e.g. privacy). It’s supposed to be a seminar class with lots of discussion, and the students can be expected to do a little reading outside of class. We have a full roster of 20 signed up, so managing the discussion might be a bit tricky, of course.

We’re in the process of collecting reading materials — magazine articles, book chapters, blog posts, etc. for the students to read. We explicitly didn’t want it to be for “technical” students only. Do any readers of the blog have great articles suitable for first-year undergrads across all majors?

As the class progresses I will post materials here, as well as some snapshot of the discussion. It’s my first time teaching a class of this type (or indeed any undergraduates at Rutgers) so I’m excited (and perhaps a bit nervous).

On a side note, Edwin Starr’s shirt is awesome and I want one.