![]() The irony here is that all of our majors do take a required course in statistics, taught by the math department. I am sure the students in this class are learning statistical theory and are getting three units’ worth of education out of the experience. With calculus, for a lot of them, not so much. I think it’s fair to say that, after graduation, many of our students would be using statistical and data science skills up the wazoo. I’m betting that most students aren’t using calculus much after they graduate. in Biology, they aren’t expected to apply it to anything in biology. So, even though they need calculus to get a B.S. They also need to complete a year of physics, though nearly everybody takes the physics sequence without a calculus prerequisite. Our majors need to complete a semester of calculus, and some take it in semester right before they graduate. To add coursework related to data literacy, we’d have to cut something. We can’t add more units to our major, because reasons*. I would guess that most of our faculty teaching upper division undergraduate courses would say that that things would be a lot better if our lower division students were provided with more opportunities to increase statistical, experimental, and data literacy. Our curriculum has shortcomings when it comes to statistics, experimental design, and data visualization, interpretation, and management. After browsing the catalogs of a variety of other universities, I think we’re not alone. In the various majors offered by our Department of Biology, I’m convinced we’re not providing our students the most useful set of quantitative skills. The times have changed, and our curriculum is not keeping up.
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