In this episode we have Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West, two professors at the University of Washington, who talk about a fantastic new course they have designed called “Calling Bullshit“. The course aims to teach students what bullshit is, how to spot it, and how to deal with it. Needless to say, it’s timely. It’s also gotten a lot of attention lately.

Of course there are plenty of bullshit examples in data analysis and visualization. Carl and Jevin discuss many of them in their course.

On the show we talk about how they developed the course, what bullshit actually is and what distinguishes it from other types of misinformation, how to recognize examples of bullshit, and how to ‘call bullshit’ in an ethical way.

Enjoy this “bullshitty” episode!

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• Big Data Skepticism w/ Kate Crawford
• Data Ethics and Privacy with Eleanor Saitta
• Cognitive Bias and Visualization with Evanthia Dimara
• Visualizing COVID-19 with Carl Bergstrom
• Visualization and Statistics with Andrew Gelman and Jessica Hullman