Introduction to Data Science (Public Policy)

Data is everywhere. From historical documents to literature and poems, diaries to political speeches, government documents, emails, text messages, social media, images, maps, cell phones, wearable sensors, parking meters, credit card transactions, Zoom, surveillance cameras. Combined with rapidly expanding computational power and increasingly sophisticated algorithms, we have an explosion of digital data around us. Privacy, ethics, surveillance, bias, discrimination are some of the obvious policy issues emanating from these data sources. But there is also incredible potential for better under…