Matt's Ch 2 notes

[RohanAlexander]

• It might be useful to discuss the plan, simulate, gather, explore, and share process more explicitly in the text. This might start from a diagram of those steps and include short descriptions of each, prior to jumping in. Knowing where they are in the journey and having a mental map of the full chain can help people feel more confident, particularly when doing something new.
• Also, I wonder if an example at the beginning from data journalism might also help contextualize the work for people – maybe an image pulled from a news story that shows how this work operates in social and political decision-making? Just an idea…
• Finally, I really like the required reading listed at the beginning, again, because of the way it links the critical and the technical work. This might be made more explicit by adding in callouts with quotes from those texts and short explanations of their relevance in key moments of the technical descriptions. Signposting the connections between the readings and the work will really help get the message across that the technical work that they are carrying out, and some of the important decisions they are making along the way can reproduce or work against political positions, neutrality of technical work, AI bias, etc. This would really really show the value of ‘telling stories with data’!

[RohanAlexander]

• It might be useful to discuss the plan, simulate, gather, explore, and share process more explicitly in the text. This might start from a diagram of those steps and include short descriptions of each, prior to jumping in. Knowing where they are in the journey and having a mental map of the full chain can help people feel more confident, particularly when doing something new.

Have added this in the introduction of this chapter.

• Also, I wonder if an example at the beginning from data journalism might also help contextualize the work for people – maybe an image pulled from a news story that shows how this work operates in social and political decision-making? Just an idea…

Not sure if this works, but have tried and will see how it settles.

• Finally, I really like the required reading listed at the beginning, again, because of the way it links the critical and the technical work. This might be made more explicit by adding in callouts with quotes from those texts and short explanations of their relevance in key moments of the technical descriptions. Signposting the connections between the readings and the work will really help get the message across that the technical work that they are carrying out, and some of the important decisions they are making along the way can reproduce or work against political positions, neutrality of technical work, AI bias, etc. This would really really show the value of ‘telling stories with data’!

Good point. Have tried to add throughout.