Technology

Professor Delia North runs a data analytics programme to ensure teachers can help students understand the vital role of statistics.

In a digital world, the value placed on learning how to code can be (somewhat) overwhelming. And while it’s easy to see how technology continues to shift different sectors, it’s also important to ask what other skills should be prioritised and when. This is something Delia North, the former dean and head of school of mathematics, statistics and computer science at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, is passionate about. As a statistics professor, she teaches people to become data literate and ‘to understand that when you make a statement, it should be evidence-based decision-making and the evidence comes from the data’, she says.

North’s commitment to education comes from being a lifelong statistician. Because she found statistics by accident, her goal is to now make sure that children know what statistics or data analytics is at a school level. “I was studying computer science in the ‘70s and at that time, you were forced to do six months of statistics… but I had never even heard of the word statistics! And just by luck, when I did it, I thought it was quite cool. I enjoyed it so much that I carried through to a Ph.D,” she says.