ID1: Statistics in the World

Headline: ‘Company Charged with Gender Bias in Hiring.’ Is the company biased? How can we tell? What do we measure? The research supporting the headline is probably less definitive than you’d expect. In this course, we will investigate the practical, ethical, and philosophical issues raised by the use of statistics and algorithmic thinking in realms such as medicine, sports, the law, genetics, and economics. We will explore issues from the mainstream media (newspapers, webpages, TV) as well as scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals. To do all of this, we will consider a wide range of statistical topics as well as encountering a range of uses and abuses of statistics in the world today.

The Course

Art by @allison_horst

The main idea behind this course is to get the participants (that’s you) to leave in December questioning every number you come across: in the media, at sporting events, when researching for another class, when carrying out your own research, etc. Certainly there are some good numbers out there, but I hope that you will start asking yourself questions like “where did that come from?”, “what if you looked at it from another angle?”, “what if we knew the rest of the information/data?” We’ll look at sources that range from journalism to scholarly writing to fiction, and we’ll see how statistics are used and misused. As in many ID1 courses, the goal is for you to become critical inquirers.

Student Learning Outcomes.

By the end of the semester, students will be able to:

  • describe the inherent and natural variability in the world around them.
  • argue thoughtfully that models produce information about trends and not individuals.
  • articulate the ways in which data are hard to collect (bias, opinions change, genetic info, sparse availability,…).
  • combine current and historical documents to understand some of the negative impacts on society due to the statistical sciences.
  • identify ways in which graphs are effectively and ineffectively used to communicate.
  • understand the writing process and know of concrete ways they can improve as writers.
  • access various resources around campus to enhance their educational path.

Course website

Statistics in the World was last taught in Fall 2021, materials can be found on the course website.