Signal through the Noise: Data Literacy as Self-Empowerment

In today’s increasingly digital world, we produce (and continue to produce) large amounts of data about things ranging from test scores, to social media posts that we “Like” or “Comment”, to online shopping recommendations, to how safe (or not) a new engineering design could be, to self-driving cars using pre-programmed algorithms in order to make ethical decisions in unavoidable accidents. This volume of data has led to people questioning their relationship with data and how to extract meaningful insights to make decisions.

But it’s also easy for people and organizations to use data to mislead others. Now more than ever, young people need to have data literacy to make informed decisions that empower themselves and others with truth of information.

This Education Transfer Plan (ETP) uses a “case study” instructional model to equip students with essential data know-how in order to “see the signal through the noise”, meaning to challenge misinterpretations, misrepresentations, and miscommunications about data.