Science & Math
4 courses, in the order they are meant to be taken. You can start anywhere, and they build.
How to read the course codes
- -00 means start here.
- -01, -02 are steps on one path, in order.
- A letter (-T1, -P2) marks a track. Tracks run in parallel: take any track you like, in any order, without taking the others.
- -99 is the capstone. Take it last.
The path
- SCI-01
How to Read a Number: Statistics for Citizens
Step 1 on the single path through this series.
Every civics argument arrives with a number attached. This course teaches you to check one: what was counted, who counted it, when, and compared to what. Polls and margins of error, rates versus counts, the denominator that decides the story, charts built to mislead, and the arithmetic of representation itself. No calculations required, and none of the numbers in it are invented.
- SCI-02
How We Know What's Out There
Step 2 on the single path through this series.
Astronomy taught as evidence rather than as facts to memorize. Start where navigation ends, with finding yourself by the sky, then climb the distance ladder one rung at a time: parallax, spectra, variable stars, exploding stars, redshift. Finish able to take any number in a popular astronomy article and trace it back to the thing somebody actually measured. No equations.
- SCI-03
The River and the Watershed
Step 3 on the single path through this series.
The physical half of the river story: where the water comes from, what it carries, what it does to the land, what lives in it, and how you would tell whether it is healthy. Built alongside a real paddle from Indiana to the Gulf, and usable on whatever creek is nearest to you.
- SCI-04
Intro to Citizen Science
Step 4 on the single path through this series.
How to design a study you could actually run, and how to know what your own data can and cannot support once you have run it. The question, the protocol, the sampling, the confounders, the recording, and the honest write-up. Finish with a study you could start next month.