Make Me Data Literate

Michael Franklin is a Software Engineer at the Centre for Population Genomics, and a former student of mine. This was a really interesting chat that roamed all over the place! Have a listen.

This is an infuriating interview with Polly Hemming, Senior Researcher at The Australia Institute. Polly is amazing, but the interview is infuriating because of the outright deceit practiced in the field of Climate Data and Carbon Credits. I kept wanting to stop the interview to scream and throw things. An enlightening, fascinating, and enraging conversation!

"Particularly in the Indigenous context, We're really keen to unpack this notion of research objectivity or independence. To make the point that the person who's doing the evaluation/data analysis really brings their own social and cultural baggage to that question. So on that basis we're trying to make the case that it's important for Indigenous people to be leading that work. That argument is difficult to get across in certain settings."

This is a great chat about critical thinking and the importance of scepticism in Data Science, and the importance of data and scientific literacy around the world. Check it out!

An amazing conversation with Neuroscientist Associate Professor Nic Price from Monash University, who has a lot to say about the way we teach science, how we can understand the brain, and how we need to get comfortable with uncertainty. Check it out!

An amazing chat that ranged over the power of data storytelling, the impact of scientific fraud, and how to stay positive in the face of environmental catastrophe, Professor Euan Ritchie is a remarkable science communicator, an Ecologist, and a seriously lovely human being.

"Data is power and knowledge, and if we have good data it gives us opportunities to make better decisions, and make choices between different decisions, about which decision might be the best, and the most effective, and the most efficient."

"The first thing I think [about graphs] is: what story am I supposed to believe when I see this? What are they trying to make me think? And then immediately, once you understand 'oh they want me to think that it's really big, or it's going down really quick, this pattern is abnormal…' then I immediately think 'what other stories also fit that data?'"

"So economics calls itself the science of the efficient allocation of resources. It tells itself that we help answer the question of what to produce, when to produce, and for whom to produce… but there's nothing in economics that says we shouldn't collect more tax and have a health system that's as good as the Nordic countries. There's nothing in economics that says that we should cut taxes for high income earners and spend less on aged care. These are choices."

"It's actually interesting to observe the things people are trying to do with data as a way of assessing our civilisational maturity."

"The pandemic has shown us that we can act quickly and dramatically for other people, with a positive outcome. We saw a problem, we thought 'oh no, we have to do something about this problem, let's change the way we behave'… that's what we need for climate change."