There’s a learning curve involved with understanding how the news works.
We might begin – as kids at least – with the assumption that the news is the objective list of everything of note that is happening around us/the world. But, we learn over time that a big part of understanding the news is looking beyond what is presented to us and asking 3 questions –
1. How was the information sourced/collected?
2. What have they omitted/chosen to omit?
3. What is the bias in their reporting?
Interestingly, the learning curve around working with data when we make product and business decisions is no different. The early promise of big data was that large amounts of data would solve any problem.
That promise didn’t pan out.
So, asking the above questions when we look at data/analysis and marrying a desire for data with a healthy skepticism for what it is telling us ensures we keep asking the questions that help get us closer to the truth.
As in the case of the news, better to replace “data driven” with “data informed.”
