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“I would recommend double majoring with a different degree, because I think while data science by itself is a very, very useful and versatile degree, I think being able to apply it to a particular domain overall makes you a better statistician, or economist, or historian, right?”

—Alan Liang

In the final episode of the season, we explore the pivotal role students played in shaping Berkeley’s undergraduate data science program. We sat down with three alumni — Alan Liang, Vinitra Swamy, and Gunjan Baid — who were instrumental in building the foundations of data science education at Berkeley. They reflect on their unique contributions, including developing curriculum, infrastructure, and interdisciplinary initiatives, and how those experiences shaped their career trajectories. From Alan’s insights into teaching technical concepts, to Vinitra’s innovative work on scaling Jupyter infrastructure, and Gunjan’s efforts on connector courses and technical systems, we highlight the long-lasting impact of student-led innovation.

“I really loved the experience here of being a graduate student….there's a very collaborative atmosphere that people are always super excited about working on what they're working on, and that passion is what really drew me to the PhD as well. Like, the excitement to work on ideas that might be a bit too risky, that might be a little bit out there, a bit crazy, but you know, trying to get it to work and to work alongside people that are willing to put in the late nights and early mornings, because they want to, not because someone is forcing them to.”

—Vinitra Swamy

“Really dig deep and make sure you understand the details of a problem that you're working on. This still comes up a lot for me, but if something seems like it's off, if you're training a model and something looks funky, it's probably because something is off. And I think it's easy to kind of brush over the details and kind of gloss over that. But more often than not, really kind of getting your hands dirty, peeling back the layers, looking at the data, and going deep on a problem is how you'll make the most progress.”

—Gunjan Baid

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“We introduce a new data set to them every week, and we try and use data sets that are either themed around Illinois, or themed around things that we think that they are interested in. And so that's been something that we started doing when we first piloted the course, and have continued to do that each semester. And the students really are invested in the course, because they're using real world data that they have questions about.”

—Karle Flanagan

In this episode, we explore the creation and growth of STAT 107, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s introductory data science course designed to be accessible to all students, regardless of major or background. We sat down with Karle Flanagan and Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider, the teaching professors behind STAT 107, to discuss their journey from a pilot program with 18 students to a thriving course with 1000+ students today. They detail how they built a curriculum that combines computer science and statistics, while keeping students engaged through real-world datasets, interactive live demos, and interdisciplinary collaboration. They delve into the challenges of scaling the course, the importance of co-teaching, and their broader efforts to expand data science education to high schools through initiatives like the DPI Digital Scholars Program.

“So in the very beginning, we actually started by being like, there's going to be a CS day and a Stat day, and that I would give a CS lecture, and then Karle would be there, kind of just sitting in the audience, and then Karle would give a Stat lecture the next day, and they'd be inner related, but they were kind of separated. And then one day, we were just like, I want to kind of get Karle's opinion on something and let give her perspective, because I come from an engineering background, and I am obsessed with formulas. Karle, I think, really relies more on, like, tables and graphs and like, really wants to understand the story behind data, and only once you're motivated by the story do you really want to dive in deeper. And so the way we see problems are wildly different…Students just love the fact that it's back and forth.”

—Wade Fagen-Ulmschneider

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“One of the ways we incorporate ethics is by trying to expose students to a plurality of perspectives. So we want students to hear from people with different perspectives on what it means to engage with data ethically, and so we do this by hosting guest speakers. We encourage students to take classes in a variety of departments around campus. We also try to introduce students to frameworks that can help them think about how to incorporate diverse perspectives in the creation of tech products and policy.” —Mallory Nobles

Today, we sit down with Dennis Sun and Mallory Nobles from Stanford University to discuss the university’s innovative approach to undergraduate data science education. Dennis and Mallory share insights into Stanford's dual-track offerings: the technical BS in Data Science and the interdisciplinary BA in Data Science & Social Systems. They dive into the origins and goals behind these programs, highlighting how they equip students with essential skills in data science, statistics, and ethics. The conversation also covers Stanford's emphasis on experiential learning through capstones, project-based courses, and partnerships with fields like neuroscience and engineering.

“When I came to Stanford, one challenge that was clear to me was that there were hardly any data science and machine learning classes that were accessible to freshmen or students early on in their college careers. So many of them were gated behind probability, linear algebra, and even several computer science courses. And it's a lot to ask a student to take a bunch of theoretical courses before they get to find out what data science is really about. So that was kind of the genesis of the Principles of Data Science course. It was designed to give students a sense of what data science is about, and it gives them the practical motivation to convince them that all the theoretical courses that they'll have to take are going to be worth it in the end.” —Dennis Sun

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“Entonces lo que yo procuro hacer con los estudiantes que son de áreas como de humanidades o ciencias sociales, es asociarlo como a situaciones cotidianas, haciendo analogías o buscando ejemplos de cosas que cualquiera ha experimentado. Eh como que se desarrolle esa intuición y ya después pues lo lo le ponemos como él la forma de de la sintaxis y ya el lenguaje específico que usemos”

In the podcast’s first ever Spanish speaking episode, Eric Van Dusen and special guest host Edwin Vargas Navarro sit down with Camilo Andrés De La Cruz Arboleda from the Universidad Externado de Colombia. Camilo shares his journey from studying law to embracing data science and technology, merging the two fields to innovate legal education in Colombia. He discusses how he engages law students with data science concepts, making technical subjects accessible to those without a STEM background. Camilo also explores the challenges of teaching data science in Latin America, the importance of open data, and the role of data science in sustainability and public policy.

En el primer episodio en español del podcast, Eric Van Dusen y el invitado especial Edwin Vargas Navarro conversan con Camilo Andrés De La Cruz Arboleda de la Universidad Externado en Colombia. Camilo comparte su trayectoria, desde estudiar derecho hasta abrazar la ciencia de datos y la tecnología, fusionando ambos campos para innovar la educación legal en Colombia. Habla sobre cómo involucra a los estudiantes de derecho con los conceptos de ciencia de datos, haciendo accesibles los temas técnicos para aquellos que no tienen antecedentes en STEM. Camilo también explora los desafíos de enseñar ciencia de datos en América Latina, la importancia de los datos abiertos y el papel de la ciencia de datos en la sostenibilidad y las políticas públicas.

“Yo creo que históricamente el derecho ha sido una profesión que ha estado muy reacia como a a aceptar como una revolución tecnológica y por lo menos acá en Colombia, hasta incluso hace muy pocos años se permitía hacer una audiencia por una videollamada o incluso radicar documentos por un correo electrónico es que algo que existía hace miles de de años hasta ahora, hace recientemente se se pudo incorporar dentro de del día a día de la carrera de los abogados. Si uno quiere seguir siendo competitivo, tiene cuanto menos, conocer lo que puede hacer con tecnología e incorporarlo a su a su día a día. Sea un abogado que haga eso, va a estar diez veces más preparado que el que quiera seguir como la en la en la forma tradicional, pues de llevar a cabo la profesión.”

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“I literally collected 150 jobs on Indeed.com and parsed out all of the skills that were mentioned in all the jobs, created a graphic and said, Okay, here's the courses we already have that have these skills, and here's the skills I need to create courses for.”

Today, we sat down with Crystal Wiggins, a pioneering educator in two-year college data science programs at Connecticut State Community College. Crystal shares her journey in developing Connecticut’s first two-year data science program, which has since expanded to five campuses. She discusses her innovative approach to project-based learning, teaching students to "get comfortable with the uncomfortable," and preparing them to adapt in a rapidly evolving field. Crystal also delves into her leadership role in nationwide conversations about data science in community colleges, her work with organizations like AMATYC (American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges), and her vision for industry partnerships in the classroom.

“Don't be afraid to dive in. You do not need to be an expert. You can learn this with your students. There's many things that students ask me, and I'm like, Well, let me show you how to find the answer. And I was actually finding the answer for myself because I didn't know, but that's what's great about the field; it's more about teaching them how to find answers than it is knowing everything yourself. So again, my slogan, be comfortable with the uncomfortable, is like the slogan for data science for me, because you're never going to know everything, and that's what I tell my students.”

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“I developed a class called DS 100, which is in a lot of ways very similar [to Data 8], with the primary objective being, I want people to walk away from the class with saying I understand what data science is. I can do a little bit of programming, and now it's up to me whether I think it's interesting or not. I don't want anyone ever to feel like they can't do it. It's just whether or not they enjoy doing it.”

In this episode, we sit down with Langdon White from Boston University to discuss his journey from software consulting to becoming a key figure in BU's growing data science program, starting off with BU Spark! He shares the challenges of expanding a data science curriculum, including the launch of new programs, and his overarching mission to make data science accessible to students of all backgrounds. Langdon also explores innovative teaching methods like experiential learning and gamification, while highlighting the importance of diversity, ethics, and inclusivity in data science education.

“I continue to think that our biggest challenge in this industry is making sure that we have representation from all backgrounds, right?…Every student should be walking out of the school with an expectation of inclusion and diversity, but also ethics. And that the ethics falls to you…and you know, encouraging students to step up and represent themselves, from an ethical perspective, an inclusion perspective, and the diversity perspective.”

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“So what we do in Data Feminism is try to synthesize a whole lot of feminist ways of thinking about the world, that have to do with questions of bias and oppression, that have to do with questions of sort of unequal power, and who gets to make choices about how to design systems — with these sort of really broad social questions, we try to apply them to data science as both a field and as a practice.”

Join us as we engage in a conversation with Lauren F. Klein, Associate Professor at Emory University and Director of the Digital Humanities Lab. Klein shares her unique journey from a background in comparative literature to pioneering the field of digital humanities, where she bridges the gap between computational methods and humanistic inquiry. We delve into her innovative projects, including her influential "Data Feminism" book and the "Data by Design" project, exploring how these works challenge traditional data science perspectives and emphasize the importance of context, history, and ethics in data visualization.

“The point that I'm trying to make in this project is that if we take this historicized, almost literary and critical, humanistic lens to this history, we can see how the people who were designing data visualizations were either asking very similar questions to the kinds of questions about responsible data visualization that we're asking today, or they weren't. And because of that, we can see how their visualizations — far from being some sort of neutral representation of data — in fact, represented a certain policy sort of unreflective politics that I think we also need to be able to identify again, so that we don't reproduce that in the present.”

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“We're kind of in an early phase among most social scientists, trying to figure out what's new here, what's different, and how to integrate it with our standard social science methodological concerns, which I don't think we should abandon. Thinking about the relationship between theory, concept and measurement. For example, that's one of the things that social scientists bring to the table in data science projects: thinking about questions of representativeness, generalizability, and questions of causal inference.”

Welcome to the season 8 premiere! In this episode, we sit down with David J. Harding, a professor in the sociology department at UC Berkeley. David shares his unique academic journey in sociology and data science, emphasizing the integration of social science methodologies with data science tools. He discusses his work on poverty, inequality, and incarceration, and the challenges of using administrative data in research. The conversation delves into future directions for his research on adolescents and urban communities, the importance of bridging social science and data science education, and strategies for creating inclusive classroom environments.

“A standard complaint about running and estimating models in the social sciences is that we make a lot of assumptions, and then don't have the ability to test them. Then right along comes the kind of more machine learning type workflow, which allows us to learn what the model should look like from a portion of the data, and then test it and validate it on another portion of the data. I think social scientists should be building that sort of workflow into our normal work process all the time.”

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“You can be hoodwinked with data in the same way that you can be hoodwinked by a car salesman. And so the idea of [Calling B******t] was to step away from all the details of the black box: that's the statistical procedures, the algorithms, etc. (Not to say that we don't pay attention to what we do.) But the idea is to really pay attention to the input data that's coming in—to think about things like selection bias—to think about where that data is coming from.”

Join us in our Season 7 finale as we host Jevin West, an associate professor at the University of Washington and a co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public. Dive into a deep discussion about the intersection of data science and misinformation, the challenges of big data, and the ethical considerations that come with it. Jevin shares his experiences from the early days of data science programs, his insights on combating misinformation through education, and the evolution of his course and book, "Calling B******t." Whether you're a data science professional or a student, listen in to explore how data science education can empower us to make informed decisions and foster a more truthful society.

“One of the most important skills that we're going to want to enhance more and more is humaneness…things like being able to ask questions, to sort of work through logic to really tease out things, like correlation versus causation. Machines don't tend to do so well [with those things]—they don't have access to the physical world. That's one of their weaknesses. So you want to lean into your strategic advantages as humans…maintain that humaneness by doing things that machines can't do.”

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Join us as we speak with three different guests, all UC Berkeley Data Science alumni, who have gone on to pursue higher education. Ranging from learning sciences to epidemiology, our guests share their experiences, challenges, and insights into how their data science education prepared them for their current paths.

Ashley Quiterio, a PhD student in Learning Sciences at Northwestern University, delves into the intersection of data science and education, highlighting the transformative potential of data-driven approaches in shaping learning environments.

“Try everything and try different things. I mentioned all these different roles [I did during undergrad], where I was trying to see where I fit, deciding what I like about data education. There's all these different lenses and different ways of thinking about where you fit. So I'd encourage people to try that out, early and often. Data science is such an interdisciplinary field that you're not going to be lacking opportunities.” — Ashley Quiterio

Anna Nguyen, a PhD student in Epidemiology and Clinical Research at Stanford University, shares her journey from data science to public health, emphasizing the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in addressing complex health challenges.

“Regardless of what anyone says, there's no pure cut way of getting into grad school. Pursuing opportunities that allow you to really explore your interests and displaying a willingness to learn is probably the best way to prepare for a masters or a PhD program. I think I definitely overestimated how much time I had in undergrad. And the time was so limited and valuable, so it's really not worth doing things that you don't enjoy in that limited time.” — Anna Nguyen

Rodrigo Palmaka, a Masters student in Statistics at UC Berkeley, offers perspectives on computational pathology and statistical research, illustrating the versatility of data science skills in diverse research domains.

“I think I always sought to focus on the fundamentals—not overfit or pigeonhole myself too much—and give myself some flexibility to, you know, be able to adapt to the next big thing.” — Rodrigo Palmaka