.@KathiFisler & I have an upcoming Viewpoint in CACM about intro to CS:
data-centric = data science + data structures
We're challenging most people to rethink what an intro to CS means, who it's for, what ends it meets, and how it should be structured.
https://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/kf-data-centric/ …
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Replying to @ShriramKMurthi @KathiFisler
Data science is also a great forcing function to figure out what CS concepts that novices need most. When edu researchers at Stanford learn R, their classes have one (1!) week for programming essentials (the rest is stats/ML).
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Replying to @wcrichton @KathiFisler
Naah, I don't believe this. There is ABSOLUTELY no reason to believe that they learn all the essentials that they need. Often the instructors have no idea what the essentials even are. Heck, even many CS people don't. So, nope.
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Replying to @ShriramKMurthi @KathiFisler
For sure, we shouldn't look to current data science courses and adopt the essentials they teach. I know first hand how lacking that one week is. I'm saying that, as a framing for CS1, data science forces a more practical pedagogy.
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I've seen CS1 that teaches pointers/memory, Monte Carlo methods, MVC, web programming. Just a random smorgasbord of what the instructor likes. But data science limits the application scope, and keeps a focus on computational techniques specifically needed for data analysis.
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Just look at Data8. They don't even teach for loops! Incredible! A world where students learn higher-order functions before they learn iteration. That's where I want to live.
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cognitive psychology. PhD