Data Detectives

I'm a longtime listener of podcasts and some of my favorite series are by an economist named Tim Harford. His series 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy is great, especially his episodes on clocks and how they eventually led to GPS. His most recent series, Cautionary Tales, is an excellent case study in how people make bad decisions (his most recent episode is all about Florence Nightingale's data visualizations). Tim has a new book out titled The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics. I listened to an excerpt on a recent podcast episode and decided it was worth a read. Seeing as how we all act as data detectives in our geospatial work, I think it's worth sharing just a few of the 10 rules Tim outlines in his book.

Rule 1

 Take a moment and read the headline from the news story below.