Data and Decisions Courses Spring 2021

This course develops fundamental analytical and programming skills to complete the “analytic pipeline”, including specifying research questions, selecting/collecting data ethically and responsibly, processing and summarizing datasets, and stating findings, while considering all assumptions made. Students will identify vulnerabilities in analyses, including sources of bias and ethical implications. Some programming skills recommended, but not required. Some prior use of data recommended, but not required.

Problem-solving framework and analytic techniques for solving messy, unstructured, high-impact, real-world organizational/societal problems within an interdisciplinary, intercultural, experiential learning context. Definition of problem scope, objectives, need for change, ethical concerns, and diversity and inclusion issues; identification of stakeholders and their values; evaluation of decision tradeoffs; problem decomposition and hypothesis formulation; project planning and administration; data versus user requirements, ethical and inclusive decision making, data collection, preparation, and analysis; team roles and management; professional communication of insights, policy and action recommendations.