The Desire To Use Data

The Oceans of Data Institute has put considerable energy into understanding what it means to be data literate in the age of “big data”. We, of course, are not the only ones interested in this as awareness of the shifting landscape grows. An internet search we did recently revealed attempts by organizations around the world to describe data literacy with definitions that vary in length from a short sentence to more than 200 words.

Many of the definitions are aimed at practitioners in specific disciplines, such as journalism or computer science and thus focus on specific skills (such as survey statistics or database management) that are essential to their professional work with data. Others, such as the Data-POP alliance—a consortium created by Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, MIT Media Lab, and Overseas Development Institute—have a much broader focus, and in fact argue that “data literacy” should be synonymous with “literacy” in today’s world. And they have a definition of data literacy that caught my attention:

“the desire and ability to constructively engage in society through and about data.”

The word “desire” in this definition made me realize that we so often focus on the knowledge and abilities associated with data literacy, and tend to ignore its behavioral aspects. And how incredibly important it is for us to be motivated to engage with data – to dig beneath headlines and simple explanations, perhaps even feel a sense of enjoyment as we probe complexity and build deep understandings.

I personally have experienced that sense of enjoyment when working with data, as well as the satisfaction that comes from recognizing expected or unexpected patterns that emerge. It happened when I worked as a geologist, finding ways to visualize complex subsurface data that no one else had considered, and seeing potential oil reservoirs emerge in my maps and cross-sections. And it happened as I sorted and analyzed responses to questionnaires I gave my high school students after each unit of curriculum that I taught, revealing new insights about how to improve my teaching.

How do we help students discover how incredibly interesting it is to work with data? We’re asking that question as we think about how to design activities for very young students that will encourage them to “play” with data while learning about the natural world. We’re looking for signs of student motivation and engagement as college students explore data associated with the tracks of marine animals on our Ocean Tracks interface. Because, after all, having the ability to do something isn’t worth much if you’re not interested in using it.

When we gathered expert big data analysts in 2014 to describe what they do in their jobs, we also asked them to list the behaviors they felt were important. These were reviewed and vetted by 100-150 big data analysts from institutions ranging from Airbnb and Facebook to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and The Fund for Peace. In a future blog, I’ll focus on the behaviors they felt were most important.

In the meanwhile, if I had the experts in data analytics and education who participated in our 2015 workshop on Building Global Interest in Data Literacy gathered and able to weight in, I’d ask them if it might be appropriate to tweak the definition of the data literate individual to recognize the importance of desire. Perhaps something like this:

“The data-literate individual understands, explains, and documents the utility and limitations of data by becoming a critical consumer of data, controlling his/her personal data trail, finding meaning in data, and taking action based on data. The data-literate individual can [and is motivated to] identify, collect, evaluate, analyze, interpret, present, and protect data.”