During Wednesday’s class (almost) every week, we will spend just the first few minutes looking at a news article, blog post, tweet, or anything else you come across that uses Data Science to try to make some point.

The purpose of this is to encourage you all to pay attention to how data is used in the everyday media you consume, and to start to think carefully about it.

Not every example has to be great! All that we ask is that your examples clearly use data in some way, and where at least one visual is produced as well as at least one key number or value that gets the point across. In fact, if there are some flaws or shortcomings about how the data is presented, that can be very interesting to discuss.

Resources

We encourage you to share articles from any source.

Some of the best data-intensive reporting is being done by national newspaper outlets. At USNA, you have free access to the Washington Post and the New York Times. We encourage everyone to take a moment and register for your free access using your USNA email address, following the instructions here.

Your assignment

Follow this link to a Google sheet and find the tab for your section at the bottom.

By the end of the first week of class, just add your name for a week when you are sure you will be in class that Wednesday.

Then, at least two days prior to your scheduled date, add a link to the article/post/whatever you are discussing.

On that day of class, be prepared to discuss the key image or visual from the article, as well as one key number that came out of their data analysis.

You don’t have to be an expert! This should really just take a few minutes. We will all discuss it together, and hopefully have fun.

Grading

Every student must sign up, fill out the spreadsheet with an appropriate example, and come prepared to say a sentence or two introducing it on class that day. Then you will earn an A for this homework assignment.