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SPIA 4464: Data and the Art of Policy-Making and Planning

This course offers a critical examination of the use of scientific and technical information in planning and policy-making, exploring issues and challenges through a social science lens. Students will investigate appropriate and responsible uses of data within collaborative and deliberative policy-making and planning processes, engage with the presentation of data and underlying models in accessible and understandable formats, and integrate various forms of knowledge into decision-making, including local and traditional knowledge.

Why take it?

Students taking this course will acquire skills in quantitative analytics and model building, allowing them to make informed decisions throughout their education and make sense of the world in their post-college futures. This course will integrate and foster reflection on these skills, challenging them to consider the limitations, ethical dimensions, and consequences of assumptions and decisions often made in big data analytics, and how they can engage in more deliberative and democratically responsive model building and analytics.

SPIA 4464 fulfills an elective in the Global Business Practices to Improve the Human Condition Pathways minor.

Requirements

There are no prerequisites for this course.

This course fulfills Pathways requirements in Advanced Quantitative and Computational Thinking and Ethical Reasoning.

Student Work

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