[filmgirlcw]

I think that’s unfairly dismissive to the data scientists, statisticians, analysts and engineers who work at the New York Times and other major publications (as well as smaller, but crucially important places like Pro Publica).

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...