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Data Literacy

Data literacy is the ability to understand, use, and communicate data

What is data literacy?

Data literacy is, in short, our ability to understand and use data. But what is "data"?

Data terminology

  • Data
    • "“Data” is any kind of raw information that we work with in order to learn something new." (definition from our data lit workshop)
  • Data story
  • Data set
  • Quantitative
  • Qualitative
  • Measuring: Describes the magnitude of something; how big or small it is.
  • Counting: Tells us how many of something we have. This also requires careful definitions (for example, of the units being counted), and above all, good communication so others understand what we mean. 
  • "Case" or "event": each individual, object, or thing in our collection
  • Variable: individually measured characteristics of the cases
  • "Value" or "observation": the measurement of a particular case for a given variable

For extensive lists of data-related terminology, see:

Deceptive data

A common misconception is that data is purely objective.  We see charts and naturally feel that the information we're seeing is truthful and persuasive. But the way that the data is presented and discussed involves choices that influence the interpretation of that data. This is what lead economist Ronald Coase to famously say:  

"If you torture the data long enough, it will confess to anything." 

The maps below are from famous data visualization writer Alberto Cairo's book How Charts Lie. Consider the two maps, which both represent the results of the 2020 Presidential Election. The first map uses bubbles to represent which counties went for for each candidate, but presents it as if it was representing people who voted. The second map scales the counties by their population. Both maps seem to suggest a landslide victory, but this was not the case - the popular vote was very close. Choices made during the creation of the maps change how readers perceive the data.

 

 

Example drawn from: Cairo, A. (2019). How charts lie: Getting smarter about visual information (First edition). W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Source for maps: https://engaging-data.com/county-electoral-map-land-vs-population 

https://engaging-data.com/sizing-states-electoral