As the coronavirus has infected millions of Americans, the news media have become saturated with numbers: new infection cases, hospitalization rates, death tolls, and vaccine trial results. Many Americans have been overwhelmed, and in part because too few of us are comfortable with data, we have been susceptible to a plague of misinformation.
Most Americans don’t have the skills and knowledge to work with data, despite their critical importance to understanding our world and making informed decisions. This data illiteracy must change, and our education system needs to prioritize data-science education for all students.
Technically speaking, data science is nothing new. Scientists, businesses, and governments have long collected and interpreted data and used it as a basis for decisionmaking. But two recent changes have made data science much more relevant to all of us. The first is an explosion in the availability of data, fed by smartphones and the internet. The second is a dramatic improvement in the quality of software tools for analyzing that data.
Despite being commonly misunderstood as a skill relevant only to technical roles, the rise of data science has had huge impacts in almost every field, from football to art history. This sea change presents many opportunities, and skills in analyzing and interpreting data can give young people access to new career opportunities. The employment-information website Glassdoor, for example, ranked “data scientist” as the second best job for 2021 based on openings, compensation, and job satisfaction. Even for those who don’t pursue data science as a career, many, many working adults—nurses, salespeople, journalists—need data skills.
More importantly, data use is a practical skill that makes education more relevant. When I wrote Freakonomics, I employed data to explore topics as diverse as sumo wrestling, real estate, and the drug trade. Similarly, educators can engage students by having them analyze data on topics that interest them like crime, the border crisis, global development, or climate change.
In many ways, this is a plea for educational pragmatism. Our world has been revolutionized by information technology, yet our K-12 curriculum is still trapped in the industrial age. Instead of teaching our young people obscure trigonometric techniques, let’s help them learn how to interpret the huge amounts of data being produced every day in our hyperconnected world.
Instead of teaching our young people obscure trigonometric techniques, let’s help them learn how to interpret the huge amounts of data being produced every day in our hyperconnected world.
So what needs to be done? Reforms should continue along a number of tracks. First, education policymakers at the state and district …….