Awash in Data, Thirsting for Truth

… Now, in a numbers-soaked era when the word “algorithm” seems to be on everyone’s lips and entire news outlets, like Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog or The Times’s own Upshot, are based on interpreting statistics, some core journalistic questions arise: How important is data to reporting? And does it get readers closer to the truth or obscure it?

I’m thinking about these questions because of two recent pieces in The New York Times, both of which have generated considerable reader response. CONT.

Margaret Sullivan, New York Times

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