Data Literacy Course

This is a Ximera course aimed at the general population to develop their data literacy. This course will cover things such as:

• cause and effect
  • correlations
    • Anscombe's quartet
    • Simpson's paradox
    • correlations in compositional data
    • unintended consequences
      • homebuyer's tax credit inflated prices by more than the credit?
      • Braess' paradox
      • rabbit explosion in Australia
    • how likely is it?
      • null hypothesis
        • pareto distribution from exchange of 1 dollar at random in fully connected network (economy)
        • urban segregation by income (Hoyt model, Burgess model) from agent-based model Urban segregation as a complex system, Feitosa Ecology and Development Series No. 70, 2010
      • model believing
      • Occam's Razor
• common logical fallacies
  • spurious correlations (http://www.tylervigen.com/)
  • https://bookofbadarguments.com/
• estimation
  • orders of magnitude
    • viability
      • is this claim actually possible
      • what would the consequences of this claim be
    • absolute vs relative measurements
      • percent increase from a small number to a slightly larger small number
      • percent increase from large number to a slightly larger large number
    • averages and variance: small samples vs large samples
      • math dept 2 players, ec dept 20 players, music 5 players in NCAA tourneys small depts: tend to do max, min (since effect of each player is larger) large depts: tend to do about average (since effect of each player is smaller)
  • growth
    • constant
    • linear
    • quadratic and higher order polynomial
    • exponential
• biases
  • selection bias vs treatment
  • confirmation bias
    • self-fulfilling prophecies
    • motivation, goal- vs process-orientation
• systems thinking
  • positive and negative feedback
    • cognition and epistemology
    • Metcalfe's law and other network effects
    • technological lock-in (+) Arthur, W. B. Competing technologies, increasing returns, and lock-in by historical events. Economic Journal 99, 116–31 (1989)
      • Facebook
      • Betamax, laser discs
      • start-up failure
      • Word, Excel vs WordPerfect, Lotus
    • biological embedment (+)
      • Evolvability, Kirschner & Gerhart PNAS July 21, 1998 vol. 95 no. 15 8420-8427 http://www.pnas.org/content/95/15/8420.full
    • riches to the rich, poverty to the poor (+) Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function, Mani Science 30 August 2013: Vol. 341 no. 6149 pp. 976-980 DOI: 10.1126/science.1238041
    • synchronized firefly flashes (-)
    • thermostats (-)
    • equilibrium of supply and demand (-)
    • macroeconomic automatic stabilizers
    • adaptation
      • Weber's law (-)
  • control points, leverage, policy
• social dilemmas
  • social trap
  • tradegy of the commons
  • prisonner's dilemma
    • iterated
  • traveler's dilemma
  • hawk-dove/chicken
  • volunteer problem
• privacy
  • anonymous is not unidentifiable
    • MIT student project to guess sexual orientation
    • Using visited links to guess gender
    • browser fingerprint (Panopticlick@EFF)

Bibliography

The dynamics of correlated novelties F. Tria, V. Loreto, V. D. P. Servedio & S. H. Strogatz Scientific Reports 4, Article number: 5890 doi:10.1038/srep05890 http://www.nature.com/srep/2014/140731/srep05890/full/srep05890.html