By Anjuli Niyogi, Editor-in-Chief
Data Science is now being offered as a math course at Mills High School in this 2020-21 school year. Taught by AP Statistics and Algebra II teacher, Lai Bui, this sixth-period class currently has twenty-one total students in it, the majority being seniors, with two juniors. The class’ prerequisites are Algebra 1 and Geometry, so this class can be taken as early as a student’s freshman year if they have completed these courses beforehand.
Data Science covers similar topics to that of AP Statistics, however, this class requires students to look at larger, more realistic data sets that incorporate multiple variables in them. It also involves analyzing and creating visual data representations using the computer coding language R. Ms. Bui described “people who study data science do tend to use R, but it’s not the main part of this class [….] it is the tool we use to try to create and analyze the things we want.” One senior, Kailah Pintor described “so far in this class, I learned how to code in R Studio […] It’s pretty confusing at first, but once you start understanding and connecting ideas together, it’s fun and easy.”
The rigor of this class is similar to that of an AP course, as it is a college-level class normally completed in one semester. Senior, Leanna Yu, addressed that “the amount of work is not a lot, but it will require time if you want to fully understand the concepts because as with any computer programming language, it can get confusing and difficult.”
Students are currently learning about data frames and understanding the various factors involved in data collection, as seen through a recent lab experiment conducted on Jupyter Notebooks. This newly introduced open-source web application will be used throughout the year, as many professional data scientists use it to share documents with live code, equations, and visualizations.
Senior, Justin Suboc, included, “I wanted to join the class because I never really knew anything about data science and it’s one of the most rapidly growing careers.”
This class has been taught in previous years within the San Mateo Union High School District by 2 other teachers, one of whom advocated for the addition of this course into San Mateo High School’s course offerings. San Mateo High School teacher, Cera Wong, was a part of a subteam with university professors who worked to create a curriculum for the class, apply for grant funding, and implement it into high school classrooms.
When this class was brought up in the Mills Math Department, Ms. Bui was reminded of a Freakonomics podcast episode she had listened to about the US’s math curriculum no longer matching the skills that students need in the workforce. Ultimately, Ms. Bui decided to take on teaching this new class because of this, and despite the small class this year, she expects it to grow in popularity over time. Ms. Bui noted, “I’ve noticed even other school districts are interested in offering the course so it’s going to be a part of the normal options for math classes.”
Yu added; “I’m really glad that Mills is now offering this class because it’s the perfect introduction to understanding college data science, despite not being an AP. Surprisingly, I found out that my sister also uses the same [Jupyter Notebook] to code in her UC Berkeley data science courses.”
Ms. Bui recounted why most students can benefit from taking this course; “[data science] is not even just for students interested in STEM, but it’s for [students] to become familiar with data because it’s so common now and bigger fluency is expected.”
I can definitely see myself using the elements of this class later on in college and life. I want to explore actuarial science and it requires heavy computer and data science understanding. Hopefully this class introduces me well to the topics and encourages me to better comprehend future college material.”
Justin Suboc, Mills Senior
