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“There's a famous quote by a statistician, John Tukey, who's often associated with sort of introducing and promoting the concept of exploratory data analysis. And his quote is that the best thing about being a statistician is that you get to play in everyone's backyard, by which he means, as a data scientist, you get to dabble in all of these different areas…the longer you work in statistics, data science and adjacent fields, you really start to see that all these stories around data that come up in different disciplines, they're actually linked through the language of statistics and mathematics. So when I start a new domain, I will usually try to start by reasoning by analogy” —Prof. Alex Franks

In this week’s episode, we talk with Professors Mike Ludkovski and Alex Franks from UC Santa Barbara about their diverse research backgrounds—ranging from stochastic modeling to sports analytics—and how they shaped their approach to data science education. Mike and Alex discuss the value of co-teaching, designing interdisciplinary curriculum, and helping students connect theory to real-world practice. They also touch on some major initiatives aimed at expanding access to data science education, including the Southern California Consortium and the Pacific Alliance for Low-Income Inclusion.

“We found out… the awareness of data science is vastly different across campuses within just a few miles of each other… we are trying to help different places stand up data science courses, programs, and share best practices. We organize events like datathons for high school and community college students” —Prof. Mike Ludkovski