You Can’t Have One Without the Other: The Importance of Considering Both Quantitative and Qualitative Data

“Data is a tool for enhancing intuition.” –Hilary Mason, Data Scientist Learning to interpret data effectively was one of my first lessons as a teacher. I came into an established classroom in December when the existing teacher took a new role. As such, I inherited a gradebook already filled with scores for the 120 students

From the Math Classroom to the Boardroom: Keys to Presenting Technical Information Effectively

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.“ Albert Einstein Break Down the Goal In my first year teaching, I wasn’t sure if I should laugh or cry at the entirely vague state standard of “Use linear functions.” I ended up doing neither and instead spent several hours brainstorming all of the

The Data Don’t Always Say What You Want to Hear: The Role of Cognitive Bias in Data Analysis

“If there’s something you really want to believe, that’s what you should question the most.” Penn Jillette It was 6th grade. I was sitting in the back of a (boring) language arts class when the boy seated next to me – a boy that I’d had a crush on for the entire semester – turned

The Problem With Teaching to the Test

“Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr. Whether you’re working with students in a classroom or a machine learning algorithm housed on a computer, teaching to the test can have

Why I Decided to Learn Data Science

“The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.” – Carly Fiorina I didn’t find data science. Data science found me. After 18 years of teaching math, I knew that I needed a change. I was restless and unchallenged even while I was winning awards and creating programs. Looking for my next move, I kept browsing job descriptions