DATA 303
Applied Modeling and Visualization
Spring 2022

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[RStudio@Calvin] [Teams] [From Class] [Calendar] [Homework]

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Each student will read a different, approved book for this course. A list of recommended books appears below, but you are most welcome to suggest other titles. Just be sure to get your book approved in advance.

The book report project overall includes three parts:

1. Presentation (with slides and a handout)
2. Discussion with the class
3. Written report: due by the end of finals.

Presentation

Sign up for a presentation time using this form.

Each student will make a presentation regarding the book to the class. Presentations should be 5–10 minutes long (followed by questions and discussion for a total of ~ 15 minutes) and include:

• A summary of the big ideas of the book
• Discussion of 1 or 2 examples or themes that would be interesting for our class to think about
• Your recommendation: Why should someone read, or not read, this book?

You should create a few slides to accompany your presentation. You are encouraged to make your slides using RMarkown, especially if you have never tried that.

RMarkdown is more useful when presenting data analyses than book reports. But if you have never done it, feel free to give it a try. There are two ways to get started:

1. You can choose “Presentation” when you are creating your RMarkdown document or you can choose a template from the xaringan package.

2. Experiment a little early on to see which system you like best – it can be a little bit of a pain to switch later because they each use RMarkdown slightly differently.

Handout

Accompanying your presentation, you should prepare a 1-page handout with the following:

1. Bibliographic citation

2. Summary/abstract of the book, highlighting the main points of the book or the main ways in which it relates to this class, both the technical topics (modeling, visualization, etc.) we have discussed and the ethical and perspectival topics

3. A few noteworthy or salient quotations from the book.

4. A personal response.

   What did you find especially interesting or eye-opening? Anything you disagree with?

Use of bullet points or outlines is acceptable for this.

Include a link to your handout in the same spreadsheet as your presentation video.

Written Report

In addition to the presentation in class, each student will prepare a written book report of approximately 4 pages (not more than 1200 words). The book report should include

1. An introduction to the author and subject.
2. A summary of the book that includes its main points and themes.
3. A thoughtful response to the book that relates the book to themes covered in the course.

Use headers to clearly identify the sections of your report.

You may certainly recycle material from your presentation handout, but this report should be both longer and more formal (proper writing style, etc.). Printed reports should use 11 or 12 point font and be formatted for easy reading.

List of Recommended Books

Be sure to get your book approved (even if it is on this list) before reading it. Also confirm that you have access to the book (by purchasing or through a library).

The book you select should be a book you have not already read for another class.

Brynjolfsson, Erik, and Andrew McAfee. 2014. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. 1st ed. W. W. Norton & Company.

Carr, Nicholas. 2010. The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. W. W. Norton & Company.

D’Ignazio, C., and L. F. Klein. 2020. Data Feminism. Strong Ideas. MIT Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=x5nSDwAAQBAJ.

Dickerson, M. T., and C. Taliaferro. 2016. The Mind and the Machine: What It Means to Be Human and Why It Matters. Wipf; Stock Publishers. https://books.google.com/books?id=Wj\_kDAAAQBAJ.

Dormehl, Luke. 2017. Thinking Machines: The Quest for Artificial Intelligence–and Where It’s Taking Us Next. TarcherPerigee.

Eubanks, Virginia. 2018. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. New York, NY, USA: St. Martin’s Press, Inc.

Fry, Hannah. 2018. Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms. 1st ed. W. W. Norton & Company.

Jardine, M. 2004. The Making and Unmaking of Technological Society: How Christianity Can Save Modernity from Itself. Christian Practice of Everyday Life. Brazos Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=AFfuAAAAMAAJ.

Lanier, J. 2010. You Are Not a Gadget. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. https://books.google.com/books?id=H76XlWv\_FqQC.

———. 2013. Who Owns the Future? Simon & Schuster. https://books.google.com/books?id=rORuxPh\_IG4C.

Mayer-Schönberger, V., and K. Cukier. 2013. Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. An Eamon Dolan Book. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. https://books.google.com/books?id=uy4lh-WEhhIC.

Noble, S. U. 2018. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=-ThDDwAAQBAJ.

Rosling, H., O. Rosling, A. R. Rönnlund, and A. Goldberg. 2018. Factfulness. Lindhardt og Ringhof. https://books.google.com/books?id=rm1UDwAAQBAJ.

Tegmark, M. 2017. Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. https://books.google.com/books?id=2hIcDgAAQBAJ.

Vallor, S. 2016. Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting. Oxford University Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=NHPADAAAQBAJ.

Wu, T. 2017. The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads. Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. https://books.google.com/books?id=mNkxDwAAQBAJ.

Yonck, R. 2017. Heart of the Machine: Our Future in a World of Artificial Emotional Intelligence. Skyhorse Publishing. https://books.google.com/books?id=HquvDQAAQBAJ.

Zuboff, S. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs. https://books.google.com/books?id=lRqrDQAAQBAJ.