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“It doesn't take too long to look into social phenomena quantitatively to realize that we have profound inequities that are structural in societies around the world. It's not only the United States; these inequities are promoted by those who own resources, those who want to keep certain privileges, those who keep certain wealth at the expense of others. And this introduces abject situations.”

Hello and welcome back to the sixth season of the Data Science Education Podcast! In this episode, we’re chatting with Juan Gutierrez, Professor and Chair of Mathematics at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Gutierrez begins by detailing how his research on malaria utilizing mathematical biology helped him to realize the importance of looking into social phenomena quantitatively in order to bring to light the inequities in the world. He goes on to reflect upon how his introduction to programming at 10 years old in Colombia allowed him to immigrate to the US in 2001, fluent only in programming and not yet in English, emphasizing to him the value of education.

“We have to recognize that every individual comes with different strengths and deficiencies in their knowledge. So having an adaptive learning system that adjusts to those peaks and valleys might help accelerate the discovery and the acquisition of skills so that we can truly provide meaningful pathways to competence. We want to make this as easy as possible for everybody, to bring all participants in the educational experience to a level of competency that we require in society to function properly.”

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