Two principles to avoid common data mistakes - Sunlight Foundation Blog

Excerpt from a timely data analysis/transparency/information responsibility perspective

"For many people, data can quickly overwhelm and confuse. It’s easy to misinterpret data, or to use it irresponsibly. We as humans are not particularly good at intuitively grasping large numbers, and our educational system generally does a poor job of helping us to counter this problem.
For that reason, I want to offer two basic principles that I think could prevent a majority of the data mistakes that I observe:

• Cherry-picking works better with fruit than data
• Correlation provokes questions better than it answers them"

Two principles to avoid common data mistakes - Sunlight Foundation Blog