Context changes everything

Economist Ronald coase said that "if you torture the data long enough, it will confess." 

With data being used in narratives all around us this quote has never been more salient.
During political season you can see all news channels around you showing probability of particular candidate to win based on the data they gathered from sources. This is the problem.
Who are those sources are they people having same bias or are they only Adults of particular region which happen to like the same party, How to measure how diverse their views are, How to even know they are honestly answering the surveys, questions that are used for data collection.
You can never say for sure that the glass is half empty or half full.
When we say 50 percent of population is living happily, then it also means 50 percent is not.

Data only speaks what we want it to speak.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The population dilemma

In Nagoro Village in Japan, there has been no child birth since 2010. There are only about two dozen adults. The village is a tourist attraction for it's realistic human- sized stuff doll placements in schools, streets etc. More than 30% population of Japan is over the age of 65, which is expected to rise even further. First some history, There is a very long history of intense work culture in Japanese society. They became the second largest developed economy in the world mainly due to this work ethic. As economy blossomed, Women participation in the workforce increased. As everyone has something to work on, less and less people were free. A trend beginning to emerge that there were fewer and fewer births as living standards improved.  Women were marrying very late in their life as now they can sustain themselves independent of anybody for however longer they wanted.  Now the reality of the economy is that wages can't keep on rising forever. It is cyclical. And other economies...
Read more

The promise of CRISPR

CRISPR is a biological tool that in future will be as impactful as the microchip if not more. Cas-9 protein is used to delete or insert DNA into cells at a specific site. It may allow us to detect viruses, cure cancer cells and genetic diseases like Sickle cell anemia.  Infact a Chinese researcher actually edited the babies in vitro to be HIV resistant. He is behind the bars right now. The idea is that molecules can be programmed. You can edit the genome of embryo. Some are worried that playing with nature will have disastrous consequences at some point in the future. This is true, it is not as straight-forward as you delete one gene for any ailment and get rid of that. The promise of this technology only becomes reality if we form a common standard in which precise situation should we use CRISPR. The advantages would be plenty if we manage to do just that. RNA is what hold the promise. The vaccines for COVID19 are based on the mRNA technology. There is messenger RNA and transcript...
Read more

Mental health denial

In Indian families there is one common pattern of not recognising the emotional pain that any individual goes through. We only feel for someone when we see them physically hurt like they can't move properly, having ache in body parts etc. These things are clearly visible. Anyone can feel them, they can view it's consequences. Mental and emotional feelings are not visible to anyone. Only the person dealing with it, can feel it. It may take a long time even for the closest of family members to notice it. Indian families are special and unique in their own way. They expect you to be happy always.  I am privileged in every way one can imagine but I too feel the hesitation when speaking about these issues to my family. Mental health denial is extremely prevalent in Indian families. Especially woman face these denial  mercilessly. Young girl especially when they weren't properly educated about their own body would feel like the world has ended when suddenly they discover in schoo...
Read more