This week, Dan and Ray talk about Predicting the Future, and how we use the past to predict the future. We discuss things like correlation and causation, and what to be aware of when using predictive analytics and machine learning to influence outcomes. We start by discussing the link between education outcomes and backyard swimming pools, continuing through the amount of data that sits in education institutions, and how it might be used to predict the future for a student or cohort, and plan appropriately

During the episode you'll learn:

- Why correlation, not causation, might lead to the belief that to improve education outcomes we need more backyard swimming pools

- Why, through data quality efforts on missing data, there are lots of Australian students registered as living at the North Pole

- How 8 pieces of data can predict a student dropout