An investigative data journalist and a former tech lawyer teach you how to spot tricks and hidden disclosures within these interminable documents — and even how to claw back some privacy.
John Schrag had known for a while about an unexamined pool of data that could shed new light on the issue of concussions in high school sports. The executive editor of a newspaper in Oregon, his first instincts were to keep the story in-house and garner all the glory, but he quickly realized the only way the story would see the light of day was through collaboration.
Too often, inexperienced data users accept the data they receive at face value. Data scientist Heather Krause cautions that data should be treated similar to a human source. Just as you’d do a background check on a human source before publishing what they told you, you need to understand your data.
