2015 · Briefing · 2014–2017
The question moved past “can you use a computer?”
Data Sense was formalised because the computer had started producing figures that ordinary jobs were expected to believe.
By the middle of the decade, Computing Literacy was necessary and no longer sufficient. Offices were handing people spreadsheets and calling the result a decision. The new failure was confident misuse: a chart accepted because it was colourful, an average trusted because it was a single number.
Data Sense was scoped as a domain in its own right. Data literacy. Basic statistics for non-specialists. Spreadsheet modelling. Introductory visualisation. A plain account of algorithms that shape everyday decisions. And the ethical questions that appear the moment data is collected about a person who did not write the spreadsheet.
The levels were aligned with the computing pathway so a learner could see the staircase: Data Foundations, Data Practitioner, and Data Analyst (Applied). Nobody was asked to become a statistician in order to be allowed an opinion about a chart.
We were genuinely energised by this expansion. It was the moment the network stopped defending “computer skills” as a single subject and started telling the truth about the work.