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by cljs-js-eval
2560 days ago
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I don't dislike people using the statistical tools available to them, but in my own field (social sciences) there's a huge replication crisis going on right now. And a lot of that is due to people who were never good at math taking easy-to-use statistical tools like Excel and SPSS and blindly running stats without programming or math training. Is it too much to ask that people treat a field with a bit of respect? Like, just because NYT reporters can use some of these "data skills", can they hold off a bit until we figure out if they're even any good at statistical analysis after their crash course? We currently have an entire academic field that has to throw away a lot of their findings because tools like sheets and SPSS gave them false confidence. I don't have any higher hopes for the NYT newsroom. |
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The purpose of this material isn’t to suddenly turn normal reporters into data scientists, it’s to give them a better grasp and understanding how how to evaluate different types of information that become important when reporting.
I don’t know how good or bad this material is — a cursory glance shows that it’s very low-level, the type of stuff I learned in my 100 level accounting and stats classes as an undergrad. But I won’t dismiss this material being made available and potentially augmented for all — tho I wish it was stored in GitHub or GitLab.
If you look through the material, there is nothing that actually says that someone who goes through this training will be a skilled data journalist. But it might just prevent poorly-interpreted articles like this [1] from being written.
And for the record, I’ve worked with data journalists who were more skilled in math and computer science than the engineers I work with at giant tech companies.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/09/business/media/google-new...