3H: Teaching introduction to data science as a creative writing class

Abstract

Data Science is often taught as a blend of statistics and programming. Both of these are essential to learning in an introductory data science course. However, analysis without successful communication is effectively useless in a data science setting. In an introduction to data science course, students have the opportunity to communicate their results in a variety of ways, such as graphs, oral presentations, or written reports. In this presentation, we will discuss both effective and ineffective ways of preparing students to be able to communicate their findings in an interactive and meaningful way through self-contained data visualizations and short, in-class written and oral reports.