EduCon 2025

“No one ever made a decision because of a number. They need a story. Data without insights - without a story - is useless and learning how to extract stories from the data is the real skill.” - Daniel Kahneman. From kindergarten to high school and beyond, we teach our students how to tally, how to put numbers on a graph, what are variables, but do we show them how to tell a story based on data? From Grade 3 on, our school puts a lot of emphasis on data science, what, how, and its multiple applications. This year, based on the book and website, Dear Data, we developed a unit where students were asked to tell their story through data in a creative way. Students were first introduced to the book and the website, as well as a plethora of artists who use data to tell a story - from big issues like climate change, to words of kindness, or human behavior. After a week of collecting data students chose colors, patterns, tally systems, and represented their data in a creative way. One student kept track of the number of times they listened to Taylor Swift’s music, while another student counted the number of times their grandpa called them on the phone. Through their data tallying and creative representation students were surprised to see patterns and correlations. This conversation will introduce the unit, as well as other creative ways to teach data, and through a hands-on workshop participants will create their own data art stories, share them, discuss the importance of data collection and how to make it fun and engaging.