Helping students master data
Today, data is everywhere. But how can people learn to make sense of it? One intensive economics course at MIT is built around doing just that, by getting undergraduate students to produce research papers while working closely with faculty.So while floods of data now exist on scores of subjects, the goal is to get students to think critically about the methods of economics, find areas of study that interest them, and “turn topics into research questions,” as Heidi Williams, an assistant professor of economics, puts it.Williams taught the class, 14.33 (Research and Communication in Economics), last fall. It is actually a class in econometrics, the study of the methods of economics, and builds upon an earlier introductory econometrics course, 14.32. But while the introductory course surveys statistical tools more broadly, the students in 14.33 are aiming to create applied research themselves.In the class, students began by identifying research topics over...