The Importance and Emergence Of K-12 Data Science

The COVID-19 global pandemic has required everyone to make sense of data about community spread, levels of risk, and vaccine efficacy. Yet research shows that students are underprepared in data literacy. Tanya LaMar and Jo Boaler argue that data science education provides an opportunity to address this problem while providing much needed updates to the current mathematics curriculum. The integration of data science can provide a more equitable mathematics pipeline than the calculus-focused pathway that has excluded most students from a future in mathematics. Through data science, students can learn to answer questions that are relevant to their lives and communities, to be critical consumers of the data that surround them every day, and to wield the power of data analysis.