data&donuts
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  • The "How" of Data Fluency

data & donuts

"Maybe stories are just data with a soul." -- Brene Brown

Collecting all the dots:recalibrating wrong turns

2/18/2021

 
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Photo from plane--leaving Utah

Answering the question of “where?"

I am writing a book about geospatial analytics and location intelligence. Have you ever felt you held a secret that if everyone knew it the world would become a better place? Well. Its been like that. Let me clarify...
mumble | delegate | ponder is a newsletter where I write about my work but also a bit of life spills in as well. Granted things have been a little less exciting without the element of travel but there is a lot that creeps to the surface at a slower pace.

For starters, I began exploring my ESRI ArcGIS account

A starter level ArcGIS account is reasonable. I think I paid $100 for one solid year. Buyer beware though--this is definitely an enterprise solution unless you are really careful not to bring in any data that will be automatically geocoded ($$$$$) or you store large maps and data on the platform. The price tag can bloat quickly.

It was a great platform to simply learn about GIS and creating maps. Their conference sessions from last year are great educational opportunities and they offer an abundance of free tools, courses, and webinars. What they don’t offer is ArcGIS Pro compatible with MacOS. A deal breaker for me. Back in the early days of Tableau, I had to bootcamp my hard-drive and run windows on a partition. I hate Windows. When Tableau was available for MacOs I vowed to never return. Buh bye Alteryx. Yes, it might be my loss but there was also a lot to gain. ArcGIS online may be all you need. No software to install but there aren’t scripting functions unless you are on desktop version (ArcGIS Pro).

The Living Atlas is amazing and after a quick tutorial you are able to build maps using their Census data layers and a wide variety of other ready built datasets for you to explore. Happy to share a few videos I created on how to create a story map.
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I am sharing a professional hack with you. Once I felt comfortable in my geospatial skills I switched to an open source platform--QGIS. There is a python plug-in readily available and you are off to the races. This will be the focus of the book.

​I am also trying out a little live forum--link below--where we can chat in real time.
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Python is versatile (and free). I often demonstrate how to address the same question using 3 different methods. Look for these sessions to increase as I move through the book. I create and test a variety of visualizations and often perfectly great maps are too twitchy for a book where many users will be using different software. I will include them here for our discussion and in future blogs and newsletters.
Click to register  Geospatial Roundtables and other discussions 
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Embodying beautiful ideas...

1/23/2021

 
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Sonnet--To Science

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
Science! True daughter of Old Time thou art! 

Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes. 

Why preyest thou thus upon the poet’s heart, 

Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? 

How should he love thee? or how deem thee wise, 

Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering 

To seek for treasure in the jewelled skies, 

Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing? 

Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car, 

And driven the Hamadryad from the wood 

To seek a shelter in some happier star? 
 
Hast thou not torn the Naiad from her flood, 

​The Elfin from the green grass, and from me 
​The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?
Krista Tippett introduces us to Nobel physicist Frank Wilczek through her podcast, On Being. Beauty as a Compass for Truth is a mesmerizing conversation about the intersection of the physical world and ethereal topics like art and culture.

​On the topic of science and religion he answers, "In science, you’re broadly asking, “How does this work?” In religion, you’re asking, “What does this mean and what should I do about it?”

As a former bench scientist and current data analyst I am drawn to the intersection of art, science, and culture. I was drawn in while listening to Frank Wilczek compare the Bruce Munro installation Field of Light to the inner workings of the mind.

​To be reminded by Edgar Allan Poe in Sonnet to Science that many think Science removes the mystery--forces us to  realize--we don’t have to be willing participants.
There was an art exhibit called “Fields of Light,” by Bruce Munro, which consisted of acres in the desert on a hillside of lights that slowly pulsated, asynchronously, in different colors. It was the nighttime. It just made me think in a different way about what it might be to wander inside a mind and what thought looks like. And to me, it was awesome, because it brought together so many analogies and metaphors and ways of thinking about thinking and visualizing it. I suddenly thought that this is what thought really is.--Frank Wilczek, On Being

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The subtlety of living in a complex world with equally complex problems demands an intersectional appreciation to not only common elements of what might appear quite diverse but bring what is outside closer.

I will admit I often find that the isolation of current travel limitations stimulates long bouts of creativity. Fewer distractions and obligations allows a more intense and focused look at the world that surrounds us. It may feel more finite now but I would argue there is still much to discover. 
Different artists have different styles. We don’t expect to find Renoir’s shimmering color in a different world entirely, the Beatles’ from another, and Louis Armstrong’s from yet another. Likewise, the beauty embodied in the physical world is a particular kind of beauty. Nature, as an artist, has a distinctive style.--Frank Wilczek

mistletoe, good cheer, and graphic blandishment...

12/21/2020

 
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Like many of you, I am balancing equal measure stacks of work to finish out the year and a wandering eye toward the prep for a scaled down holiday feast and celebration.

Last night my husband suggested we watch Charlie Brown Christmas. By we, it was just us. The kids were off in their own homes or upstairs enthusiastically engaged with an online posse of Valorant tactical team players.

Steve is not known for sentimentality but we have always watched the special; either live on a network or from our own personal copy. The first holiday music to play is more than likely our Vince Guaraldi CD. I know we can stream it from dozens of options but there is nothing like tradition--especially around the holidays. 
Curious about a credit at the end of the cartoon reading, “Graphic Blandishment by...” I found the director, production designer, storyboard and layout artist, and background painter--Edward Levitt.
He also coined the famous credit used for many years at the end of the Peanuts specials—Graphic Blandishment. “Blandishment” is defined as “something that tends to coax or cajole,” which speaks to Levitt’s modesty and his view of the role he played in the filmmaking process.--RIP: Edward Levitt, 96, Disney Background Painter and Cartoon Modern Designer
Thinking of the word ‘blandishment’ in the context of graphics is brilliant. “A flattering or pleasing statement or action to persuade someone gently to do something.” Well, yes. That is pretty much data visualization in a nutshell, right?

Here are a few year end thoughts from the newsletter, Mumble, Ponder, Delegate over on Substack. I pulled it out from the paywall to share with you.

This specific post is from The plausibility of factual information--here are  summarized ideas from a year that has been nothing but challenging, heartbreaking, and illuminating.
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Be safe my friends and have a happy holiday season...
Hope Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering 'it will be happier’--Alfred Lord Tennyson

The value of data: location, location, location

12/9/2020

 
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A few years ago I entered the entrepreneurial space as a “newly" minted applied data analyst. Although I had been working along analysts and data scientists in my work as a medical writer and outcomes professional, it was more of an observed curiosity than an immersive existence. Somewhere along the line I began asking questions. I hesitated at first not wanting to appear ignorant but quickly noticed vague responses to questions I would have thought had straightforward responses.

​Curiosity morphed into agency as problems presented themselves and needed viable solutions. But whatever that sound is when a record scratches to halt forward movement in a movie--insert that here. Collaborative efforts to improve data collection and processes were not hailed as the “secret sauce” I had imagined. Here is the rub. Data literacy was lagging the needs by quite a significant gap. Most data departments (and I use the term loosely) consisted of finger pointing, a small measure of chest pounding, and gasps of “But we have always done it this way...”.  

Fast forward to today and I am contractually obligated to author my first book on geospatial analytics. How I got here and why will be the subject of more than a few future posts. I want to first introduce you to an organization that does a great job illuminating the importance of thinking spatially (below). 

​We all respond to graphic images. Instinctually we are grounded in the what and where of an image. Any student of data visualization recalls pre-attentive attributes--the preliminary detection of the image. But we often don’t appreciate the attentive attributes as well. Attentive attributes call in to play the higher centers of the brain to make inferences following four principles as described by Eric Kandel--Nobel prize winner in Physiology or Medicine:

1. Disregarding details that are perceived as behaviorally irrelevant in a given context,
2. Searching for constancy,
3. Attempting to abstract the essential, constant features of objects, people, and landscapes,
​4. Comparing the present image or graphic to images encountered in the past.

“Perception is the process whereby reflected light becomes linked to an image in the environment, is made enduring by the brain, and becomes coherent when the brain assigns it meaning, utility, and value.--Eric Kandel, Reductionism in Art and Brain Science."
What do we mean by “spatial literacy”? Let’s take a look. Location data looks at the environmental or first-order effects and the second-order or interaction effects. We can simplify processes into data-driven and model driven. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  We are first looking to summarize the data. What are the characteristics of the data? The testing begins during model-driven analysis. 
WorldPop data is the perfect place to start understanding the process of mapping and providing “high resolution, open and contemporary data on human population distributions, allowing accurate measurement of local population distributions, compositions, characteristics, growth and dynamics, across national and regional scales.” You won’t find a lot of US data here but I have successfully used the methods discovered here on US CENSUS data for example.
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There really isn’t--at least not yet--a handbook to guide you through the insights needed to make granular assessments about poverty beyond quantitative assessments but applying even a few of these insights to our data questions can only improve our ability to provide a 360 perspective.
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Spatial data reminds me of a useful definition I once heard of big data. It isn’t the volume that makes it big--it is the interactivity of blending different datasets to answer complex questions. This is visually appreciated when we look at layers of data integration to examine patterns in geographic regions.
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The ability to explore characteristics that influence differences in population density. It isn’t enough to simply drop a pin onto a map to indicate populations--we need context.

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Summaries of the workflows will continue to be posted here. If you are interested in the detailed  "how-to"--subscribe below:
Graphics are from HDX Dataset Deep Dive on WorldPop’s Gridded Population Datasets.
​HDX Humanitarian Data Exchange.

Indefatigable truths...

12/7/2020

 
​There are 46 million Americans with Alzheimer's disease in their brain right now, but no symptoms. --Richard Isaacson
I have two blogs. More like one and a half. The other one is sort of a repository for information. I don’t pay for that one and  at times I think it may have run its course but then I think of something else I want to park over there. The name of it is Alzheimer’s Disease: The Brand and there is plenty of value over there but also plenty I have learned that I replicate over here.

For example, you really need to do your homework. The hard tedious bits. I long advocated the work of Dr. Dale Bredesen and I am not exactly recanting but it never occurred to me to look at the data he cited from the literature in support of the claims made in his writings.The person that dug into the findings and the data in the resources cited by Dr Bredesen was Dr Peter Attia. I have listened to his podcast and read his posts for years. He has evolved into more of a pay to play model for some of his podcast show notes and communications so I was unable to locate the conclusion. Regardless I still follow many of the earlier recommendations simply because they still make sense.

​An article in The Washington Post, Atypical forms of dementia are being diagnosed more often in people in their 50s and 60s caught my attention. All gloom and doom and no grounding in the granularity needed to describe the known heterogeneity of Alzheimer’s Disease.

My dad had Alzheimer’s disease likely because of head trauma in a car accident years before we were able to make the probable diagnosis.  So with uncertainty regarding any long term benefits from the lifestyle recommendations in the literature I decided to focus my attention on longevity and prevention--the focus of The Drive. 

​Here is a direct link to the podcast Alzheimer’s disease prevention--patient and doctor perspectives
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And it sounds like what you're saying is Alzheimer's is not really one disease. it's an umbrella term that encompasses many different diseases of the brain that have some common features in the way that all cancers have some common features, cells don't respond to normal signaling, but there's this notion that someone could have a form of Alzheimer's that largely spares the frontal cortex and therefore preserve some higher order functioning versus another person that has.--Peter Attia
Here is an additional resource--an article authored by both Peter and Richard (as well as others). Click on title for full article.

Individualized clinical management of patients at risk for Alzheimer's dementia

Introduction
Multidomain intervention for Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk reduction is an emerging therapeutic paradigm.
Methods
Patients were prescribed individually tailored interventions (education/pharmacologic/nonpharmacologic) and rated on compliance. Normal cognition/subjective cognitive decline/preclinical AD was classified as Prevention. Mild cognitive impairment due to AD/mild-AD was classified as Early Treatment. Change from baseline to 18 months on the modified Alzheimer's Prevention Cognitive Composite (primary outcome) was compared against matched historical control cohorts. Cognitive aging composite (CogAging), AD/cardiovascular risk scales, and serum biomarkers were secondary outcomes.
Results
One hundred seventy-four were assigned interventions (age 25–86). Higher-compliance Prevention improved more than both historical cohorts (P = .0012, P < .0001). Lower-compliance Prevention also improved more than both historical cohorts (P = .0088, P < .0055). Higher-compliance Early Treatment improved more than lower compliance (P = .0007). Higher-compliance Early Treatment improved more than historical cohorts (P < .0001, P = .0428). Lower-compliance Early Treatment did not differ (P = .9820, P = .1115). Similar effects occurred for CogAging. AD/cardiovascular risk scales and serum biomarkers improved.
Discussion
Individualized multidomain interventions may improve cognition and reduce AD/cardiovascular risk scores in patients at-risk for AD dementia.
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I will continue to share information, preferentially in this blog, due to the limits of a free Weebly account.

The numberless sentient beings...

11/14/2020

 
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David Whyte is a brilliant human, poet, and storyteller. In his 3 week series of invitations, we meet for an hour or so each Sunday.

One of the many gifts is an exploration of a poem or two. Where was he, what was he thinking, what does it mean to him in reflection years and years later.

He began our first session by thinking about our curriculum vitae. This reminded me specifically of data science where the expectation is for a wide and dense depth of experience. The focus is on skills--not on critical thinking, problem solving, or creativity.

Perhaps you have the requisite experience and deep toolbox--and you are selected for the position. David suggests--correctly--that regardless of your cinematic expertise, there is a good chance your employer will only want a narrow part of this skill set. In an unapologetically linear manner, you are asked to perform only this narrow skill. Again and again, day after day.

All of these years later, David reflects on the poem, Faces of Braga. He thinks of  the statues in the monastery. Why were they so compelling? Wooden faces in the dark--silently shriven. The flaws in the wood under the masterful skill of the carving knife. It is these imperfections that reveal the vulnerability that humans strive to mask or hide.

For me, the fear is about the beautiful and unique skills and gifts you are tempted to leave behind. Your employer never asks for them and so you disinvite them. You fall into a routine, a sameness.

David Whyte offers a chordal invitation. “Beckon yourself into a disturbance”.

I don’t want to be ordinary or do things the same way as everyone else. I doubt you do either.
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"What does it mean to have an invitational presence in the world?...

Making real invitations, and asking increasingly beautiful questions of life - of
others and of ourselves - is one of the foundational ways we can practice and shape a more beautiful mind. It is interesting to think that we might be able to practice shaping our imaginations, our perceptions and our minds, just as we practice a musical instrument, and that there are ways of improving ourselves that are pleasurable and rewarding in and of themselves, without necessarily having puritanical goals."
In monastery darkness
by the light of one flashlight,
the old shrine room waits in silence.

While beside the door
we see the terrible figure,
fierce eyes demanding, “Will you step through?”

And the old monk leads us,
bent back nudging blackness
prayer beads in the hand that beckons.

We light the butter lamps
and bow, eyes blinking in the
pungent smoke, look up without a word,

see faces in meditation,
a hundred faces carved above,
eye lines wrinkled in the handheld light.

Such love in solid wood--
taken from the hillsides and carved in silence,
they have the vibrant stillness of those who made them.

Engulfed by the past
they have been neglected, but through
smoke and darkness they are like the flowers

we have seen growing
through the dust of eroded slopes,
their slowly opening faces turned toward the mountain.

Carved in devotion
their eyes have softened through age
and their mouths curve through delight of the carver’s hand.

If only our own faces
would allow the invisible carver’s hand
to bring the deep grain of love to the surface.

If only we knew
as the carver knew, how the flaws
in the wood led his searching chisel to the very core,

we would smile too
and not need faces immobilized
by fear and the weight of things undone.

When we fight with our failing
we ignore the entrance to the shrine itself
and wrestle with the guardian, fierce figure on the side of good.

And as we fight
our eyes are hooded with grief
and our mouths are dry with pain.

If only we could give ourselves
to the blows of the carver’s hands,
the lines in our faces would be the trace lines of rivers

feeding the sea
where voices meet, praising the features
of the mountain and the cloud and the sky.

Our faces would fall away
until we, growing younger toward death
everyday, would gather all our flaws in celebration


to merge with them perfectly,
impossibly, wedded to our essence,
full of silence from the carver’s hands.--
​The Faces of Braga--David Whyte

“Sentient beings are numberless; I vow to save them all.”--Bodhisattva vow

A breath of fresh air...

10/19/2020

 
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ivart was one of the first scientists to call attention to the observation that major transitions in evolution do not involve a single organ changing; rather, whole suites of features across the body have to change in concert.
​Some Assembly Required Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA--Neil Shubin

If you aren’t familiar with St George Jackson Mivart, today is your lucky day. In a nutshell, Mivart was trolling Darwin’s findings in his seminal work, "On the Origin of Species".

​But his question was important:
If entire bodies have to change for any great transformation, and many features need to change simultaneously, then how could major transitions happen gradually?--Some Assembly Required Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA--Neil Shubin
Charles Darwin responded thoughtfully and respectfully...
All of Mr Mivart’s objections will be, or have been, considered in the present volume. The one new point which appears to have struck many readers is, ‘That natural selection is incompetent to account for the incipient stages of useful structures.’ This subject is intimately connected with that of the gradation of the characters, often accompanied by a change of function.”--Neil Shubin

You can read more in the Neil Shubin book here. If you order from the link I get a few coins that would instead go to Jeff Bezos...

​The take home point, covering mudskippers and other amphibious land dwellers, yields the research from a group at Cornell.

"The genes that are used to build swim bladders in fish are the same ones used to make lungs in both fish and people."
​
Lungs aren’t some invention that abruptly came about as creatures evolved to walk. Fish were breathing air with lungs well before animals ever stepped onto terra firma. The invasion of land by descendants of fish did not originate a new organ--it changed the function of an organ that already existed...the change did not involve the origin of a new organ; instead the transformation was, as Darwin said more generally, “accompanied by a change of function.”--Neil Shubin
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My thesis was in population genetics so this book is a win for me but it also reminded me of data. We take a class and are often surprised when the skills or tools are not easily assimilated into a work flow. It reminds me of the fish with the genetic equivalent of a lung.

He doesn’t effortlessly stroll onto the beach and become a land dweller. There are gradients of success. There needs to be changes in a whole host of functions. Suddenly his watery environment has a drop in dissolved oxygen--mysteriously he relies on his lungs to weather the storm.
 
Perhaps our data skills are like air sacs. They exist--we simply need to challenge them to innovate and evolve along with us.

The Periodic Table: when do I use spreadsheets

9/17/2020

 
I don’t. Next question? I am only partially joking. The most common format for the output of most non-proprietary large datasets (at least in healthcare) seems to be CSV. Occasionally I can grab a SAS file but I think spreadsheets are here to stay. A CSV file has all of the formatting and formulas stripped out of the file so although they are still cumbersome--they work.
This data is from the Household Pulse 2020 COVID household survey from the Census. You can readily see that the ability to gather any information about the shape of this data is limited.

Writing a few lines of Python code can provide information about the shape of data and the variables included although unless you are familiar with the data, you will also need to download the data dictionary. This particular survey contains 82 columns and 132,961 entries or rows.
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Generating an html provided the visualization below where we can quickly review the data with less than 5 minutes of code writing--including downloading the necessary packages. If we were performing an actual analysis there are also important cleaning steps where we can import the CSV into Tableau Prep first and write a script to help with assigning variable names and shaping the data for easier analyses but my objective is simply to introduce you to some of the other options to access early in your data exploration to provide immediate insights.
You can also explore data on CENSUS website and use their interactive tool. I usually start here and formulate data questions as I go. Reach out with any questions. The newly launched newsletter will be designed to included links for deeper dive tutorials or a focused narrative for less tech orientated subscribers. You can subscribe here. Because I am switching my existing list of subscribers to the old format over to the new format--anyone subscribing to the new format before the end of September will continue to have access for free.
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Steal these ideas...please

8/30/2020

 
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One thing many of us working in statistics and data literacy can agree on is the broken pedagogy and misalignment between maths and the existing teaching curriculum.

​Now, because of COVID-19 we are taking that broken foundational model and moving it to remote learning--what could go wrong?
When I teach underlying mathematical principles in statistical or data science course I am leap-frogging over the memorization and boring bits and moving right to the application. Perhaps not ideal, but if the goal is to teach a team how to reach the part of the workflow where they can begin to curate insights from their data--a few corners are going to need to be cut.

Here is the rub though. They often learn more in the over-simplification because they never knew what they were doing down in the weeds anyway. For example, when you are data modeling--what is the shape of your data? We talk about linear, sinusoidal, or quadratic relationships. I write about it briefly in this blog--Maths in the real world.

We all have heard the lamenting about why take calculus. “When am I ever going to use it?” Did you know derivatives can tell you a lot of information in the real world? How about whenever you think about rate of change of a function? Most recently while calculating the COVID-19 rate of positive tests for example. Also when we think of population growth in biology or marginal functions in economics.

​I like to introduce the brilliance of maths that we can stand back and marvel or appreciate. Recently, a post On apple trees and man described Benford’s Law. Discovering the not so random nature of big data provides a glimpse of the complexity but also mystery of math. A look beyond the rote memorization introduction that led many of us to avoid math simply out of principle.

The quote below is from an informative discussion about online-instruction and how we need to Teach Better.
Anyway. the key thing there is that the relevance has to be there for people to engage, and we also have to think about how do you kind of shape knowledge in the discipline? You know, how does a novice look at things? And chemistry is a great example because when you're a chemist, you get good at dealing symbols.

​So, see this is going to relate to statistics. It's coming. When you're a good chemist, you have all of these really convenient, shorthand ways of representing complex ideas, and you manipulate those really easily, and you can talk to other chemists in this super-shorthand, bizarre way, and they know exactly conceptually what you're talking about. But then we try to take that and do that with novices. They don't have the conceptual understanding. They don't have that foundation. They don't know what these symbols mean. So, then they just become really good at manipulating symbols to- you know, get quiz questions right and get good grades and move on, and that's- you know, that's really not desirable.

So, we really need to get back to like the core concepts in our disciplines, especially in the sciences, and I'm sure this is something that in statistics education, people are focused on. I mean you can learn all kinds of rules and regs to move symbols around, right, but that's not what statistics is. You know, you have to be thinking about like, what do those values mean? And what does that mean for whatever is out in the world that you're studying and trying to make sense of, you know and use statistics to better understand, you know? And I think a lot of the chemical symbols and things are along those lines too. So, I would say that's what we need. We need to start moving symbols around and start getting into concepts.
I think the problem with symbols and not knowing the storytelling of their shorthand stops so many of us in our tracks. If you are integrating classroom response systems or “clickers” where you can respond to student gaps and questions in real time you can avoid the tendency to gloss over esoteric terms and abbreviations and mistakingly assume that all students are joining you on the journey.

Online workshops and webinars have taught me that we can’t do any of it in a meaningful way without engagement. Here is an article, The Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS): A New Instrument to Characterize University STEM Classroom Practices. I use it as a model for teaching technical topics remotely. I hope you will steal these ideas to make your work more engaging.
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Here is the podcast episode where they provide a bit more context to the work being done in STEM specifically in Chemistry but you can easily connect the ideas to how we our teaching statistics for example.
Stats + Stories · Teaching Better | Stats + Stories Episode 153
Join me over on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Teachable.

on apple trees and man...

8/24/2020

 
It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.-- Henry David Thoreau
I’m not judging but I am not typically a binge-watcher of TV. A few notable exceptions would be Better Things (I watch it on a loop) and a new Netflix series, Connected. Latif Nasser is a science journalist with a likable foppish personality that intentionally or unintentionally hides a complex and thinking human.

​Okay maybe “hide” is the wrong word. He is definitely packaging knowledge by distracting us from the "veggies in the sauce". You aren’t aware of how important and technical these topics are because they are seasoned with a bit of graphic artistry and film noir. All of the episodes will draw you in. The 3rd episode about “Dust” explains how the archaeologic remains in a dried lake in the Sahara desert replenishes phosphorus washed away by the rains in the Amazon basin. And other fun facts I had no idea about. These dust storms are visible from space and influence weather systems as well as our health and wellness.

Connected: Digits (episode 4 in series)

The connection running throughout the series is attributed to the “Hidden Science of Everything”. If you work in science or with data you likely are familiar. We know that skills in data science or research findings for example are not homogenized and isolated bits of information. But too often we create silos of knowledge any way. Instead of thinking cinematic we think linear. Learn this skill. Now this one. Okay here is another. A piecemeal attempt to understand the chaos and intersectionality of everything. I am a big advocate of pushing around the edges of seemingly disparate ideas until we detect a slight alignment.

The episode about digits introduces us to Benford’s Law. Back in the day before calculators, books of logarithms were published. Observation of a wide variety of data sets yielded something interesting. The random numbers were not random after all. Their distribution was following an unknown pattern. Unknown--but quietly present in all of the data. Impossible to not see once you become aware of its presence. 
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You can read more about the history of Benford’s law over at The Conversation. Or explore by visiting the page below (simply click on the image). There is a wide variety of datasets available for you to apply the law and see what happens.
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You can dig deeply over on Wikipedia as well. Benford's law, also called the Newcomb–Benford law, the law of anomalous numbers, or the first-digit law.

​Thinking outside of our specific box not only broadens our awareness but allows us to see the vast number of “boxes” on the horizon.
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