Data Science

The goal of Data Science at Rock Creek is to give students the skills necessary to use data to find meaningful insights about any field of interest.

In almost every industry, far more of today’s jobs require data science than any other STEM skill. In 2012, when Nate Silver published The Signal and the Noise, he cited an IBM study that more than 90% of data was created in the last two years. A decade on, that output of data looks quaint. In 2023, we produced almost 75x more data than in 2010. No matter what your child wants to do in life – whether they want to be an astrophysicist or open a cafe – data analysis is a tool that will enable them to make sound decisions that get them to where they want to be. Our students learn how data can help to make informed decisions, solve problems, and drive innovation. We are proud to be the first DC-area school to offer a true data science sequence.

Data science contributes to lasting learning.

Real life doesn’t hand out math worksheets. It hands out problems and possibilities where math can sometimes be applied to chart out better courses of action. There are a lot of skills required to usefully apply math in these situations: you have to frame the problem, find and clean data, and identify the math that to use. Actually using the math from math class is a minor, though necessary, step. By offering a data science sequence alongside our math sequence, Rock Creek students learn how to apply the math they are learning. Not only does this increase the likelihood that our students will be able to transfer their math skills to other real word contexts, it also provides opportunities for spaced retrieval and interleaving of concepts from math class. Together, transfer practice, interleaving, and spaced retrieval make our students’ math knowledge far more durable.

In middle school, our data science sequence aligns with our science and social science programs, deepening rigor and heightening relevance.

Middle school data science classes are centered around real-world projects that are deep dives into topics that students are concurrently learning about in their science and social science courses. When 5th grade students learn about DC in Citizenship: Local & National, for example, they conduct a companion data science project analyzing the economic, demographic, and 311 data of DC’s wards. Likewise, when students learn about climate change in 6th grade science, they do a project analyzing historical climate data to identify and predict shifting weather patterns around the world. Teaching data science allows students to conduct meaningful research, which adds depth and rigor to science and social science and makes the content come alive with relevance.

Over their time with us, students develop from completing teacher-given assignments to asking and answering their own questions.

Our data science sequence starts in fifth grade, where we introduce students to spreadsheets and teach them to analyze data in descriptive ways. As students move through middle school, they develop a broader and deeper skillset, learning how to source and clean data themselves, frame problems, and build predictive models. Rock Creek students finish middle school with a thorough understanding of how and when to use spreadsheets, both to analyze historical data and to model future outcomes.

It gets even better in high school with exciting Data Science electives.

Building a strong data science foundation in middle school not only modernizes and enhances our middle school science and social science programs, but it also allows us to offer some really fun electives in high school! Students who have completed our middle school data science sequence will be able to enroll in exciting high school electives like Predicting Climate Change, Sports Analysis, and the Data of Social Justice.

Data science develops agency.

Once you know how to work with data, you don’t have to rely on others' opinions in your search for truth—you can do your own analysis and come to your own conclusions. Each of our high school electives offers students the opportunity to take the pen: to come to their own conclusions based on evidence.