CM 193: Deborah Stone on How Data Can Lead Us Astray

Numbers have power. They convey certainty. For example, when we know whether cases of Covid-19 are rising or falling, we feel like we have more control. Like we’ve got the answer.

Yet numbers can be slippery too.

Sure. Counting the number of people in a sports stadium is objective. But what about race totals in the U.S. Census? The same goes for the number of people who fall below the poverty line or the number of people the Jobs Report counts as unemployed.

While those numbers might seem certain, a closer look offers a very different story. We need to ask ourselves: Who decides what’s important enough to count? Who creates the categories we use? And how do the questions we ask – and the ways we ask them – bias the answers?

When we ask these kinds of question, we start to realize that the numbers aren’t that objective after all. Instead, we need to investigate each one to understand what’s behind it.

That’s why I wanted to speak with Deborah Stone. She’s written an incredibly insightful book to help us do this, and it’s called, Counting: How We Use Numbers to Decide What Matters. As she so expertly explains, with so much riding on the data we gather, we owe it to ourselves to think more deeply about what gets counted and why, as well as how we decide to count it.

Deborah has taught at Brandeis, MIT, and universities around the world, and her previous book, Policy Paradox, has been a seminal work in the policy field for over three decades.

Episode Links

Conversation: How Talk Can Change Our Lives by Theodore Zeldin

Policy Paradox by Deborah Stone

Federalist Paper 54

Three-fifths Compromise

Ronald Melzack and gate control theory alternative to pain scale

Mollie Orshansky

The Team

Learn more about host, Gayle Allen, and producer, Rob Mancabelli, here.

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