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> The concrete numbers provided here, about individual ERs, with no indication as to what slice of the problem we're talking about, are essentially random noise

> The concrete numbers provided here, about individual ERs, with no indication as to what slice of the problem we're talking about, are essentially random noise when considering the problem as a whole. Again, the article lays this out concretely: > Because rentable electric scooters are so new, federal and local officials haven't started tracking accidents, and the companies have declined to release any stats. But some numbers are beginning to appear. Then, they list the concrete numbers they do know.

brownbat 8y ago
Huh. I don't feel like that was a "concrete" rebuttal to the point I actually made, especially when you really look at the "numbers" they cite next in the article, but I want to take a step back. I think it's getting lost in the noise, so to reiterate, my main point is that I'd just like journalism to include a little more analysis, to put numbers in context, and to avoid relying extensively on emotional appeals as a substitute for chalkboards or backs-of-napkins when dealing with complex social problems. Based on your username, maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like you know what it's like to wrangle data and communicate findings. Sometimes you don't have all the data you want, but you have to make sense of what you have access to, get signal from noise, and make reasonable extrapolations even under a lot of initial uncertainty. Now imagine you have access to everything the journalist had. You could ask additional questions at the hospitals or conduct additional searches in the public record. If we asked, "what else could we learn about this important trend?" is your response really, "well, if the companies don't just tell us and there's no fully funded federal study... we just can't possibly know anything aside from the fact there were some number greater than fifty headlines in six months." When we stop there I get terrified that Paulos was just right, we struggle to use numbers in public settings so nobody tries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innumeracy_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innumeracy_(book) I feel like we could have, say, talked about the populations served by these ERs, or the fraction of overall ER cases that involve scooters and how that's changing over time. Anything to give us a sense of why these ERs vary in their numbers by a factor of ten, to determine how representative they are, or anything to give us a trendline. Even headline counting COULD be rigorous if you add more methodology than this article's "quick search." The gun violence project is one example of that approach. The journos I really respect take these sorts of next steps. They do more with less. Sometimes they have to hedge and caveat, but they take a shot. It's not impossible, so I just wish we held more journalists to that higher standard, that's all.

brownbat 8y ago

Huh. I don't feel like that was a "concrete" rebuttal to the point I actually made, especially when you really look at the "numbers" they cite next in the article, but I want to take a step back. I think it's getting lost in the noise, so to reiterate, my main point is that I'd just like journalism to include a little more analysis, to put numbers in context, and to avoid relying extensively on emotional appeals as a substitute for chalkboards or backs-of-napkins when dealing with complex social problems. Based on your username, maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like you know what it's like to wrangle data and communicate findings. Sometimes you don't have all the data you want, but you have to make sense of what you have access to, get signal from noise, and make reasonable extrapolations even under a lot of initial uncertainty. Now imagine you have access to everything the journalist had. You could ask additional questions at the hospitals or conduct additional searches in the public record. If we asked, "what else could we learn about this important trend?" is your response really, "well, if the companies don't just tell us and there's no fully funded federal study... we just can't possibly know anything aside from the fact there were some number greater than fifty headlines in six months." When we stop there I get terrified that Paulos was just right, we struggle to use numbers in public settings so nobody tries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innumeracy_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innumeracy_(book) I feel like we could have, say, talked about the populations served by these ERs, or the fraction of overall ER cases that involve scooters and how that's changing over time. Anything to give us a sense of why these ERs vary in their numbers by a factor of ten, to determine how representative they are, or anything to give us a trendline. Even headline counting COULD be rigorous if you add more methodology than this article's "quick search." The gun violence project is one example of that approach. The journos I really respect take these sorts of next steps. They do more with less. Sometimes they have to hedge and caveat, but they take a shot. It's not impossible, so I just wish we held more journalists to that higher standard, that's all.