Problems, questions, evidence

Description

To answer many of the world’s most challenging questions e.g. those related to healthcare, social justice, poverty, climate change, and how we deal with global pandemics we need to understand evidence. This can come in various forms text, images, numbers. Evidence can be a driver for major decision making, help us to gain insight and form connections between issues, and reveal patterns and trends that would otherwise be hidden from us. How do we confidently assess evidence like this? Our decision-making is very often based on the numbers that shape the world we live in. In this course we will explore how to think quantitatively and qualitatively about the evidence behind the world’s ‘wicked problems’, and our ideals now and in the past. Subjects touched on will include public health crises, gender and ethnicity biases in the media, the representation of minority groups in the criminal justice system, and symmetry and patterns in art, literature, and other forms of human expression. The skills you will learn--of evaluating the evidence behind big issues and ideals of the day, and being able to communicate those issues to others--will be of value no matter what your course of study or future walk of life.