{"id":1562,"date":"2017-04-12T20:03:08","date_gmt":"2017-04-12T20:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/?p=1562"},"modified":"2017-04-12T20:03:08","modified_gmt":"2017-04-12T20:03:08","slug":"alternative-dashboards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/2017\/04\/12\/alternative-dashboards\/","title":{"rendered":"Alternative Dashboards"},"content":{"rendered":"

Justin Mungal<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/elections\/forecast\/president<\/a><\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

I remember the night of the 2016 presidential election hauntingly well.\u00a0 Several friends of mine and I gathered at The Hut in honor of its historic closing and in celebration of Hillary Clinton\u2019s imminent win.\u00a0 Beers in one hand and phones in the other, we starred with our eyes glued to the bouncing needle on the NY Times live presidential forecast.\u00a0 We could hardly steal a second to sip our beers because the needle on the dashboard kept bouncing left and right, edging towards Donald then retreating to Hilary, back and forth on \u201cChance of Winning the Presidency\u201d scale, keeping us in endless suspense.\u00a0\u00a0 Little did I know that the previous polls indicating Hillary\u2019s soon-to-be landslide victory were as false as the wavering needle of NY Times exit poll data.<\/p>\n

Looking back on that night I realize I was being duped and deprived of enjoying my frosty brew, instead stuck to an incessantly moving \u00a0and meaningless needle.\u00a0 Inspecting the data graphic now, I have no idea what I was even looking at that night of the election.\u00a0 The categories the needle teetered between (very likely, likely, leaning, and tossup) are inherently vague.\u00a0 The needles to the right depicting popular vote margin and electoral votes made sense \u2013 they showed numerical data, the needles moved according to incoming county data, and visually account for each incoming vote and their actual impact on the election results.\u00a0 So what then does the category \u201ctossup\u201d mean, how many votes does it take to move from \u201clikely\u201d to \u201cunlikely\u201d, and on what basis does the needle move within a given category?\u00a0 Later in an NPR podcast I would find out that the NY Times does not receive a steady stream of election polls data, which the continuously moving needle would indicate, but rather receives chunks of data from counties at various times throughout the night as their ballot casting centers close and compile the exit poll data.\u00a0 The endlessly wavering needle was false and was programmed to keep viewers in suspense and glued to their app.\u00a0 The true data, the two needles to the right (\u201cPopular Vote Margin\u201d and \u201cElectoral Votes\u201d), moved infrequently and did not require constant attention \u2013 offering an opportunity to close the app and put our phones down.<\/p>\n

In the dawning era of \u201cfake news\u201d and \u201calternative facts\u201d the American public needs, now more than ever, media stalwarts of integrity.\u00a0 The New York Times has been known to be one of America\u2019s most prestigious sources of news and must fight to maintain this privileged seat of honor.\u00a0 Ironically, we are also entering an era of data driven news.\u00a0 We have the capacity to collect, analyze, and visualize vast quantities of data quickly, informatively, and entertainingly.\u00a0 In a world where each news corporation has its own spin on every story, data must be reverenced for its undeniable link to truth.\u00a0 For the NY Times to report false and sensationalized data for the purposes of maintaining viewership is reprehensible and unfairly places the burden of discerning the integrity of data on ordinary citizens rather than on highly trained data scientists.\u00a0 Given the dilution of truth in our modern Twitter chatter and Facebook news feeds of lies it is necessary that the historic bastions of reporting integrity recommit themselves to the noble profession of raising the bar for what it means to be an \u201cinformed citizen.\u201d\u00a0 In the advent of big data and visualization, the possibility of raising that bar to new heights previously unimaginable has become a reality.\u00a0 We must not turn that reality into a fantasy by creating false data and misleading visualizations.\u00a0 The consequences of such behavior \u2013 a president with ties to Russia, the disintegration of universal healthcare, the launching of fifty-nine cruise missiles on Syria, etc. \u2013 are indeed grave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justin Mungal http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/elections\/forecast\/president I remember the night of the 2016 presidential election hauntingly well.\u00a0 Several friends of mine and I gathered at The Hut in honor of its historic closing and in celebration of Hillary Clinton\u2019s imminent win.\u00a0 Beers in one hand and phones in the other, we starred with our eyes glued to the … Continue reading Alternative Dashboards<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1998,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":0,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"justinmungal","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/author\/justinmungal\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"Justin Mungal http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/elections\/forecast\/president I remember the night of the 2016 presidential election hauntingly well.\u00a0 Several friends of mine and I gathered at The Hut in honor of its historic closing and in celebration of Hillary Clinton\u2019s imminent win.\u00a0 Beers in one hand and phones in the other, we starred with our eyes glued to the…","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1998"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1563,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1562\/revisions\/1563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/dataviz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}