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Not so much about data, but about how we use evidence when we don't know the original source, and how e e.g. a politician failing to deny something might be good confirmation that it's actually true. 5 tips for reading stories with unnamed sources

'Significance' is a magazine published by the UK Royal Statistical Society and American Statistical Association. E.g. this article discusses the data we might use to analyse food security, thinking about what sources of data are available and the questions they might help us answer. "data on food insecurity is biased towards the environment in which it was created and the priorities of those who collect or commission it. Data from schools is concerned with reimbursement; government data might be focused on budgetary constraints or accountability; grocery stores could (if willing) tell us what food is bought, but not how it is used; meanwhile, non-profits are most interested in demonstrating impact to funders. There is a wide variety of data sets available, but very few are created with the intent to understand the real drivers of hunger and poverty. The data may be repurposed, but modellers must be especially careful to moderate the assumptions of each data set. ...... It is also especially important that those experiencing hunger and poverty are consulted when designing any data analysis project. The input of domain experts is crucial to the success of data science endeavours, and those experiencing poverty know the right questions to ask."

hen the AP United States history students at Aragon High School in San Mateo California, scanned the professionally designed pages of www.minimumwage.com, most concluded that it was a solid, unbiased source of facts and analysis. They noted the menu of research reports, graphics and videos, and the "About" page describing the site as a project of a "nonprofit research organization" called the Employment Policies Institute. But then their teacher, Will Colglazier, demonstrated how a couple more exploratory clicks-critically, beyond the site itself-revealed that the Employment Policies Institute is considered by the Center for Media and Democracy to be a front group created by lobbyists for the restaurant and hotel industries. "I have some bright students, and a lot of them felt chagrined that they weren't able to deduce this," said Colglazier, who videotaped the episode last January. "They got duped."

During the 2016 EU referendum campaign, both sides used statistics pretty freely to back their arguments. Understandably, UK broadcasters felt compelled to balance competing perspectives, giving audiences the opportunity to hear the relative merits of leaving or remaining in the EU. In doing so, however, the truth of these statistical claims was not always properly tested. This might help explain some of the public's misconceptions about EU membership. So, for example, although independent sources repeatedly challenged the Leave campaign's claim that the UK government spent £350m per week on EU membership, an IPSOS MORI survey found that almost half of respondents believed this was true just days before the election. Of the 6,916 news items examined in our research, more than 20% featured a statistic. Most of these statistical references were fairly vague, with little or limited context or explanation. Overall, only a third provided some context or made use of comparative data. Statistics featured mostly in stories about business, the economy, politics and health. So, for example, three-quarters of all economics items featured at least one statistic, compared to almost half of news about business. But there were some areas - where statistics might play a useful role in communicating trends or levels of risk - that statistics were rarely used.

Over recent years, data has become an indispensable source for journalists and news organisations, providing excellent material for investigative work as well as storytelling. This has led to the emergence of data journalism, which, broadly speaking, uses information science and analytical techniques in conjunction with journalistic workflows to produce compelling stories rooted in data. Despite the relative maturity of data journalism and the growing application of data in editorial workflows, there is still a lot to learn about the systematic, seamless and effective integration of data and computational tools in newsrooms. It is time time for a holistic assessment of this emerging field by looking deeply into the ways newsrooms across the world have adopted data in their day-to-day workflows, the formation of their data teams, their best practices for producing high quality data driven investigative work, their success and failure stories, and emerging training requirements.

Interesting perspective on communicating evidence. With controversy about science communication, facts and alternative facts hitting the headlines recently, I've been having a number of conversations with colleagues from all over the world about why science seems to be losing in the current war on reason. This isn't in the usual fringe battle fronts like creationism or flat-Earthers. It's on topics deep behind our lines, in areas like whether climate change exists or not, how many people were present at a given time at a given place and whether one man with a questionable grasp on reality should be the only source people get their news from.

A psychologist compared online reviews of three medical products with results from clinical trials, and found the reviews are skewed towards the positive. The author of the study, Dr Micheál de Barra, wanted to look into whether people who have had good outcomes from treatments are more likely to go online and give positive reviews than people who have had average or poor outcomes. As such, the product reviews provided by online retailers may be distorted. The author looked at Amazon.com - the US version of the site - and analysed two cholesterol-reducing products and one weight loss treatment. In general, he found the extent of cholesterol reduction or weight loss reported by online reviewers was substantially greater than that demonstrated in randomised controlled trials, a more reliable source of evidence on effectiveness.

Since the census is the ultimate measure of population in the U.S., one might wonder how we could even know if its count was off. In other words, who recounts the count? Well, the Census Bureau itself, but using a different data source. After each modern census, the bureau carries out research to gauge the accuracy of the most recent count and to improve the survey for the next time around. The best method for determining the scope of the undercount is refreshingly simple: The bureau compares the total number of recorded births and deaths for people of each birth year, then adds in an estimate of net international migration and … that's it. With that number, the bureau can vet the census - which missed 4.6 percent of kids under 5 in 2010, according to this check.

Interesting links to different sources discussing data on teacher pay, and what it shows in relation to different things that stakeholders might care about. educator pay varies significantly across states, from an average of $44,921 in Oklahoma to $77,957 in New York. Why should school administrators and government leaders care about teacher pay - beyond wanting their employees to be able to afford their living expenses? Below, we present research that examines this issue. What scholars have found is that teacher salaries are linked to employee retention and that better pay seems to draw smarter people to the field and into the classroom. It's not clear, however, whether higher salaries result in higher student achievement.

Journalists know they need to get better with data and statistics, but they have a long way to go Only 25 percent of journalists surveyed said they were "very" well equipped to interpret statistics from sources, and only 11 percent said the same about doing statistical analysis themselves.

The reasons for the disparity in pay vary from company to company but the broader source of the gap can be seen in the distribution of high earners by gender. Of all the companies that have reported to date the top pay quartile, the highest paid 25% of employees, is male-dominated. Almost two-thirds of the top quartile is made up of men, while conversely 57% of the lowest-paid employees are women.

Let's say you have a spreadsheet of thousands of source names with their phone number, email address, home address, and comments/notes. Depending on how large your list is, manually sorting through that list could get tedious and inefficient. Alternatively, you could set up VLOOKUP formulas to have your source's information pop up by simply typing in the source's name as your lookup value[M1] .

A list of "happy data stories" or stories related to the arts...including: Pup Inflation: Good Dogs Getting Better. "Oh, but for a much purer example of silly data journalism that I remembered as soon as I hit send, earlier this year I scraped and analyzed the dog ratings from the Twitter account WeRateDogs." -David Henry Montgomery Sneakin' Toward the Weekend, Workers Fill Roadways "How about using hourly traffic counting stations to show how people are cheating out of the office earlier and earlier on Fridays? Mental note: we're four years away from that link being older than my incoming freshmen. Also, note the wonder at phones able to receive email being someday widely available in the story." -Matt Waite

It's human nature to spot patterns in data. But we should be careful about finding causal links where none may existStories about people getting blood clots soon after taking the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine have become a source of anxiety among European leaders. After a report on a death and three hospitalisations in Norway, which found serious blood clotting in adults who had received the vaccine, Ireland has temporarily suspended the jab. Some anxiety about a new vaccine is understandable, and any suspected reactions should be investigated. But in the current circumstances we need to think slow as well as fast, and resist drawing causal links between events where none may exist.