UNIB10006: Critical Thinking With Data

*3 written ‘’short’’ assignments (strict 200 word limit for each, assignments worth 5% each)

*3 online short assignments (60 minute time limit, single attempt, 5% each)

*Group work poster for major assignment, including a 4 minute presentation to two examiners + the class (worth 10%)

*Major assignment individual paper (worth 15%, strictly 1200 words)

*10 Weekly quizzes, each worth 0.5%, weekly quizzes can be attempted 3 times in total, no time limit. Quizzes account for 5% of your total mark.

*2 hour and 15 minute examination worth 40%. Made up of 10 multiple choice, and 10 short answers, 100 marks in total.

... In short, there is A LOT of assessment.

What is good about this subject?

*The core lecturer, Sandy Clarke, is AMAAAAAZING. She was probably one of the best lecturers I had throughout semester 1. Not only does she make the content seem really interesting and communicate it in a clear way, but she makes classes extremely interactive and fun. She uses polls, videos and very engaging case studies to present her material. Her lecture notes are very detailed and are enough to do well in the exam.

She is a very nice person and very approachable. She has three ‘’help classes’’ a week where people can approach her for 1 to 1 lessons. I did not go to any of them, but what I found so helpful was emailing her. I really needed help during swot-vac with some exam questions and topics, and she would reply to me within 24 hours. Her replies would be long, well written and extremely detailed. Not just shitty one-word responses which I got from some of my other subjects. Sandy is ultimately really dedicated and one of those lecturers who actually cares about her students and want her students to do well. She was simply awesome, made the subject so much easier for me.

*You do not need any background in statistics to do this subject. The main gains from this subject are to gain really good background knowledge on basic statistics.

Another outcome of this subject is that it allows you to be ‘’critical users of data-based evidence’’. After completing this subject, Sandy promised us we would be able to distinguish what is good data and what is bad data. And nowadays when I ready the newspaper, I am able to distinguish whether the journalist is using reliable and good sources of data or whether they are using very unreliable data. I can understand more complex uses of statistics in newspapers (eg confidence intervals, P-values, meta-analysis).

Other outcomes of this subject include understanding the principles of collecting data, how to think about and describe uncertainty in data, how to draw YOUR OWN conclusions from data and not just accept what the author is saying, and how to critically assess media reports based on quantitive data. So as you can see, this isn’t just a ‘’bludge’’ breadth, you learn lots of things are interesting and may be helpful to you throughout life/your course.

*The exam was accessible. If you work hard throughout the semester and do about 3-4 past exams you should be able to get a H1 in the exam. It was fair, nothing surprising.

What is bad about this subject?

*The assignments are so HARSHLY marked. The tutor I had literally had such BIG expectations of us, I started out with a near fail (5.9/10) and after realizing how big of an effort you needed to put into these assignments, I was able to later on get better marks. But it should not be this way. It felt as if my tutor felt that we all wanted to be future statisticians, and therefore we needed to get ALL the basics absolutely PERFECT. Any little error, marks off. My tutor needed to realize that this is a breadth subject, everyone in our classes just wanted a basic/background understanding of statistics. Every week my tutor would come to class grumpy ‘’your assignments were not good at all’’, so it wasn’t just me that was finding the assignments really hard, but everyone.

*Felt as if there was too much assessment. Six short assignments, two big assignments, ten quizzes and an exam just felt too much for me. The workload for this subject felt more demanding than some of my other subjects like geography and biology.

Yes, with screen capture. All lectures are recorded, tutorials not recorded.

Dr. Sandy Clarke takes all of the core lectures (there are 29 of them). ‘Core’ lectures, meaning the content presented in these lectures will be in your final exam.

The other 7 lectures were ‘’guest lectures’’. These lectures were more important for the assignments. If I recall correctly, there was only ONE multiple choice in the exam that required knowledge from guest lectures, so you really only need them for the assignments.

Guest lecturers include; Dr. Julia Simpson, Dr. David Dickson, Dr. Bonnie Wintle, Dr. Meghan Wilson-Anastasios.

If you are looking for a breadth that is interesting, very well coordinated, and will be valuable to your education and future, do CTWD. If you are looking for that chilled breadth with very small contact hours and small workload this subject is probably not for you.

Apart from those written assignments, CTWD gives you all the resources you need to do well; several past exams, great lecture notes, constant revision through the weekly quizzes and an awesome lecturer. So if you put the effort in and use all these resources you should be able to score highly.

Yes! About eight past exams available, with detailed solutions. Past exams were extremely helpful.

4/5

None.

Weekly: 3 x 1 hour lecture, 1 x 1 hour tutorial. (48 contact hours).

2015, Semester 1

H1