Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 42

Assignment Example With the right mindset while analyzing the data can make the difference between choosing two opposite arguments. For instance, knowing the intent of the people that produced the data will keep the reader objective about the so called facts (Graham 43). This approach might easily save the readers from falling victim to data mining or cherry picking. Having a little sense of accounting, finance, business and corporate laws can equip the readers with the right tools before making a decision of investing in the firm. The article in The Harvard Crimson, Death of Data by Raul Quintana declares that common populace lives in â€Å"post-truth† age of politics. This news article is in reference to the upcoming US presidential elections. It has become very easy to distort the facts statistically, as putting the stamp of individual belief on the data doesn’t rid it off the scent of spinning the data (Quintana). Representative Paul Ryan claims that Barrack Obama has doubled the size of the government, when in fact there is no data-matrix to confirm this. Institutes like Office of Management and Budget and Congressional Budget Office, and even Academia are facing criticism of being biased in their data projections or liberal bias. Instead of forming policies based on numerical facts, politicians formulate policies based on pre-existing ideology. What happens is that policies are made before objectively analyzing the data, and then to support the decision, the data is beaten to conform to the policy. Misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric are the predominant weapons used in twisting the data, and this is being done of regular basis. Data is no longer an objective input in a debate (Quintana). Showing one side of the picture is the most common tool for formulating policies that are based on an ideology. Politicization of data is one of the biggest challenges that the world (victims of policies/general public)