What Data Can't Do
This in-depth article in The New Yorker looks at how we count and evaluate data, and what we might be missing. What can we learn for our own data-gathering practices at camps and conference centers?
In a year of uncertainty, numbers have even come to serve as a source of comfort. Seduced by their seeming precision and objectivity, we can feel betrayed when the numbers fail to capture the unruliness of reality…
Those who do the counting have power. Our perspectives are hard-coded into what we consider worth considering. As a result, omissions can arise in even the best-intentioned data-gathering exercises.
