Talk Title: Evidence Standards and Data Science for All

Abstract: Scientific fields often believe that they hold a strong basis of evidence for claims made by their own community. In practice, however, exactly what evidence is expected for a paper to be published or for a hypothesis to become an accepted theory is complex and historically bizarre. In this talk, we will discuss a snippet of the history of evidence and how these lessons are morphing into what some scholars are calling data science. In the process, we will discuss barriers and problems in data science that need resolution for it to become accessible to the general public, scholars, and notably people with disabilities.

Bio: Andreas Stefik is a professor of computer science at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. For more than a decade, he has been creating technologies that make it easier for people, including those with disabilities, to write computer software. He helped establish the first national educational infrastructure for blind or visually impaired students to learn computer science and invented the first evidence-based programming language, Quorum. The design of Quorum is created from data derived through methodologies similar to those used in the medical community. He has been a principal investigator on 8 NSF-funded grants, many of which related to accessible graphics and computer science education. Finally, he was honored with the 2016 White House Champions of Change award and the Expanding CS Opportunities award from Code.org and the Computer Science Teachers Association.