Top Story: Don’t Forget the Denominator
Let me guess.
You weren’t a math major in college.
Then you became a journalist and realized — oh wait, math matters.
This week, Reporting Right offers some handy tips on getting the math right.
Tips
Put numbers in context.
Sources often like to give you big numbers to prove something big is happening. But, if you don’t know what the number was before, you are going to have a hard time determining if what you are seeing is a real shift or just business as usual.
Ask questions.
To figure out what numbers you are getting really mean, ask questions.
Is this number more or less than usual?
Higher or lower than last year/last month/yesterday?
Big or small compared to other places?
A significant or not significant part of the whole?
Understand causality.
Sometimes, sources will try to convince you that the thing they promote is having an impact. Breast-feeding advocates, for example, might bring you a study that shows people with high IQ’s were more likely to have been breast-fed as infants.
Does that mean breast-feeding causes kids to be smarter? Maybe, but it also might just mean “smart” women, with “smart” genes, are more likely to breast feed? Sometimes, it's unclear. So, don’t be duped by someone trying to convince you that A caused B.
Some Great Tip Sheets for Journalists Doing Math
Best Way to Report with Numbers
Also In The News
We’re Reading
Comic Relief
If You Like What You Are Reading:
Please share Reporting Right on your social media feeds.
Reach out for help at ReportingRight@googlegroups.com.
Tell your fellow reporters to subscribe.
See You Next Week!
Our Staff
Executive Editor Kyle Spencer
Our Board of Advisors
Alex Aronson, executive director of Court Accountability
David Armiak, research director for the Center for Media and Democracy
Connor Gibson, founder of Grassrootbeer Investigations
Maurice Cunningham, retired associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and author of Dark Money and The Politics of School Privatization.
Isaac Kamola, associate professor of political science at Trinity College, founder of Faculty First Responders and co-author of Free Speech and Koch Money, Manufacturing a Campus Culture War
Nancy MacLean, William H. Chafe distinguished professor of history and public policy at Duke University and author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America
Ralph Wilson, founder of the Corporate Genome Project and co-author of Free Speech and Koch Money, Manufacturing a Campus Culture War
Copyright (C) 2024. All rights reserved.
SOS: Need reporting help? Contact:
ReportingRight@googlegroups.com