Selective Data and Bad Decisions

This was a sporadic series that aimed to objectively examine selective facts in media and its impact on decision making.

Parts of the posts below have been originally published in Quartz and Priceonomics. It’s been cited in places from the Atlantic Monthly to NPR to Bruce Schneier’s blog. I’ve also given talks related to this topic at the Data Visualization New York meetup at the New School.

Posts

PART 1: The Space Shuttle Challenger Explosion and the O-ring

PART 2: How the Media Fuels our Fear of Western Terrorism (Reddit’s r/TrueReddit comments)

PART 3: The deaths that are most covered are a tiny fraction (<1%) of the way we die (Reddit’s r/Dataisbeautiful comments)

PART 4: Today’s biggest threat to democracy isn’t fake news—it’s selective facts (Quartz)