“Data, after all, is a tool —it’s up to informed human beings, who understand context, to make sense of it….The reason your profession is a profession and not a job,” [Malcolm] Gladwell said, “is that your role is to find the truth in the data.'” Scott Timberg
What truth(s) do you see in this photo? Do we focus on the number of people near the water, the trash receptacles so near the water, the quality of light? Or the free running child? Or do we look at the crosses and how many war deaths they represent among this sunny scene to ask if we want more wars?
Without context or any other information, how do we even know what we are seeing?
My argument is that we be informed so we can discern the way data is spun, interpreted, selectively shared/released. And then that we insist on including stories of real people and events for context to find ‘truth’ in the data.