For learning and game designers, data science isn’t just analyzing numbers. It’s having a conversation with the people who are playing your game. Our guest, JD Calvelli, has witnessed how game design can influence a wide variety of educational experiences and how data science can further elevate and personalize those learning experiences for different audiences.

In this episode, JD Calvelli discusses his work at RISC, a small nonprofit social innovation lab generating and implementing creative solutions to tough social problems. A significant initiative at RISC is the Data Science 4 Everyone (DS4E) initiative, a national effort to incorporate data science and data literacy into K-12 math and other subjects, emphasizing that it's important for students of all ages to be learning some fundamental lessons about data, analyzing data, and understanding data. Additionally, Calvelli describes his work developing the game Algo-Rhythm, an interactive game that uses music to introduce kids to the world of data science.

“I think all students should have some exposure to data science, because I think that, you know, it's really empowering, especially in the modern world where there's so much data around us at all times. Right? And being able to parse through that and really develop meaningful understandings of the world and that which you care about from it, I think is super important.”

Recommended Resources from the Interview:

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt

The Center for RISC - The University of Chicago

Data Science for Everyone (DS4E)

Algo-Rhythm

RStudio

Microsoft Excel

Kaggle

Google's BigQuery

The Concord Consortium’s CODAP platform