Data Science and Society

"The Data Science and Society (DSS) Webclass is a short and hands-on online course that offers participants a first impression of the Data Science and Society bachelor programme at the University of Groningen (Campus Fryslân).

Data Science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, statistics and computing to extract knowledge, analyze it and gain insights from data. Why do we need all this knowledge though? Data Science helps us interpret observations and measurements to use it for a broad range of applications. Over the last two decades, our society has become increasingly ‘datafied’, which means that data is much more useful to understand and measure what happens in society, to analyse and predict events–using machine learning and algorithms–as well as to facilitate cooperation. However, in order to lead to useful, fair, sustainable and inclusive outcomes an update to Data Science is required; this new approach embeds ethics, human rights, sociology, politics, history, and insights from other relevant fields.

The new Data Science and Society programme at Campus Fryslân is unique since it combines all of these highly relevant perspectives and disciplines from the outset to empower students to (1) ask the right questions, (2) explore how data can be used taking responsibility, fairness and sustainability into account, and (3) learn to communicate data-based insights with a broad set of stakeholders.

In this webclass, students explore this interaction and the nature of the programme by learning about the example of ‘Facial Recognition’. This method of biometric identification is becoming pervasive; we use it everyday on our smartphones, video doorbells, passport controls at the airport, as well as sports stadiums. But how does it work reliably from an engineering perspective? Are there political and ethical challenges such as discrimination? And is it really desirable to be permanently traceable in city centres, train stations and football stadiums?"

Enrolment closed

Registration for the spring web classes has closed.

Do you have questions about the web class? Have a look at the frequently asked questions or send an email to webklassen rug.nl.