Today, one can find and access an abundance of digital data on the Internet. The term mashup, which has been used in the computing field for some time and is quite common now in the popular press, can be used to describe a computer application that draws on data freely available. In a mashup, a computer application developer draws on the data for a practical purpose, such as weather forecasting. In the article, This Data Isn’t Dull. It Improves Lives., March 13, 2011 in the New York Times online, Richard H. Thaler discusses examples of online government data that are used to improve lives. In an article titled, Science Education for Everyone: Why and What? James Trefil considers the revolutionary impact of massive data stores on the way scientists perform their work, which has implications for both science education and math education, though Trefil’s focus is on science education.
Knowledge about statistics (data collection and analysis) permits one to participate in research, data mining, and machine learning, for instance. Quantitative approaches to problem solving, though limited, are beneficial. We may begin pursuit of a mission to deal with data by developing some statistical software. Initially, the software will calculate only simple descriptive statistics (i.e., measures of central tendency, mean, median, mode; and variance). Then we may expand the software to calculate correlations; linear regression; and inferential statistics such as t-test and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), and to run machine learning algorithms.