Mind the Gap! Using Data in the Classroom

Sara ShlaerIvy Tech Community College

[T]hinking critically is an art, and like any art, it can be done well or done poorly. It takes time and practice to get good at it. There is not really a formula for doing it like there is in formal logic. We need our imagination to see

connections, like a detective looking for patterns that help find who did it.

Gary Meegan, What Is Critical Thinking?https://theelementsofthought.org/what-is-critical-thinking/

HANS ROSLING

GAPMINDER.ORGVIDEOSTHE BEST STATS YOU’VE EVER SEENHTTPS://WWW.TED.COM/TALKS/HANS_ROSLING_SHOWS_THE_BEST_STATS_YOU_VE_EVER_SEEN?LANGUAGE=EN

LET MY DATASET CHANGE YOUR MINDSETHTTP://WWW.TED.COM/TALKS/HANS_ROSLING_AT_STATE#T-62930

The Ignorance Projecthttp://www.cnn.com/2013/12/10/world/gapminder-us-ignorance-survey/

With good tools, we can encourage our students to explore and play with data!

Gapminder Worldhttps://www.gapminder.org/world

Index Mundihttp://www.indexmundi.com/

 

Index Mundihttp://www.indexmundi.com/

Freedom House https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2016

Explore variables and discover relationships Challenge their own assumptions Build and test hypotheses Spot edge cases Raise new questions Be creative!

Good data visualization tools help students: