About the project
The Digital Causality Lab (DCL) is a project at the University of Hamburg that pursues the goal to teach data literacy skills in the context of causal inference. The DCL is one of 13 projects that are funded in the first round of the university wide project called Digital and Data Literacy in Teaching Lab (DDLitLab). The DCL is a joint initiative by the Chair of Statistics with Applications to Business Administration and the Chair of Logistics, Traffic and Production at the University of Hamburg. Together we want to increase the interest of business students in causality. This is why a particular focus of the DCL is to illustrate key concepts of causal inference in business-related scenarios and case studies. Find out more about the institutions and the team behind the DCL here.
For a quick overview on our project, have a look at our poster
Goals of DCL
With the DCL we want to communicate important data literacy skills in the context of causality. We are convinced that being able to understand key concepts of causality and empirically assess causal relationships based on data are key qualifications in the 21st century. Taking the participants’ interests into account, we encourage and assist participants in their personal learning pathways.
Principles of DCL
1. Teach how to learn
We encourage and assist participants of the DCL in learning important data literacy skills and tools for analysing and processing data. The students themselves decide which tools might help them and to what extent they are relevant to their projects.
2. Offering a playground for causality
We communicate important concepts of causality in an interactive way. This is why we develop interactive apps for core topics of causal inference and let participants play around with them just like in a playground.
3. Open Source
We believe that everyone is benefitting from exchange with others. Learning is much easier when resources are publicly available. If code is involved, a lot can be learned from reading the source code. This is why we publish our teaching materials like our apps and the participants’ data products on GitHub.
Activities
The DCL combines multiple activities that are intended to encourage and support DCL participants as well as disseminate knowledge on causality:
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Causality apps: We develop applications that illustrate key concepts and topics of causal inference,
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Case studies for participants: The participants work independently on business-related case studies and develop data products,
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Teach core skills and tools of data literacy: Participants will learn how to program in R or python, develop data products and apps themselves, as well as key tools for collaboration in data-intensive projects like Git and GitHub.
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Open source and collaboration: We publish the source code of all applications and intend to continuously maintain and improve the course materials.