Grand Challenge First-Year Seminar: Reasoning with Evidence: Using Data to Inform Scientific Discovery and Public Policy

Course Number: 66-118

In a time of big data and widespread skepticism of science, it is crucial to understand how data and facts can be turned into conclusions, and then into public policy. Using topics from medicine, epidemiology, and public health, this course provides students an introduction into the grand challenge of understanding how evidence is used (and abused) in support of scientific conclusions. Questions of health and disease are particularly important areas for thinking about facts and figures because many life-or-death decisions have to be made on the basis of fragmentary and unreliable evidence. Every trip to the doctor, illness, and vaccination involves a complicated mix of public policy, scientific evidence, and emotional and historical factors. A focus of this course will include the use of spatial data and how location and visualization can play a role in how we think about and reason with data. Co-taught by a statistician and information scientist with a specialty in geographic information systems, this course draws on many different disciplines, providing students a broad introduction to reasoning across the humanities and social sciences.

Academic Year: 2025-2026
Semester(s): Fall