Author’s Gab, Reader Talk.
A letter to you, the reader, so that you can finally figure out what I’m thinking.
—————————————
This Month: Quickly crunching the data
————————————————–
“Still, even when data are uneven and incomplete, there are ways to report on what scientists do know, and to use data visualizations to convey this information clearly and accurately to the public.”
— Jennifer Dorrah, “Key quotes: How to deal with COVID-19 and data”
Dear Reader,
While some people complained about the pandemic, tried to do something about how to handle the pandemic, wrote poems about the pandemic and just tried to deal with the new virus, there were some of us who were reporting on the pandemic. The initial onslaught of coronavirus coverage was nothing less than overwhelming, even stifling. At my cluster of newspapers here in Michigan, we even temporarily opened up our paywall for coronavirus stories, so people could read about coronavirus unfolding without having to worry about subscribing.
That, of course, didn’t last forever. When the panic started dying down about the virus, we cut back on opening up the paywall. But, around that same time, we also started writing a daily data story on the number of cases and deaths, overall and by county, using the data submitted by the state each day. Gradually, the online time had to write the story, so I was writing this maybe once or twice a week, starting at the end of June.
And so, I started thinking about data stories more and more and what it takes to write them, especially since it’s so important to crunch the data correctly during this pandemic. It was also important to get it right because there were a lot of people questioning the numbers they saw quoted on television. In a profession where I am literally, by creed, working and paid to tell the truth, there were people questioning my honesty in the Facebook comments every time I wrote this story. Me, I was never one who was good with numbers, but I never had an excuse to lie about it. And, I certainly wouldn’t write about numbers I had fabricated. Frankly, that would be a complete waste of my time.
So, it was important to work hard and get the story right every time and make good inferences about what the numbers could mean for the pandemic as we tracked it. Thank goodness I had a calculator, because I had to do math really fast! If I didn’t, we wouldn’t get the story to press on time, and no one wanted that, including me. As a result, I’ve had several front page stories, as we have tracked and printed about the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.
Hopefully, people have paid attention as this story has unfolded. No one really knows when a vaccine will arrive right now. And, as I write, in July, numbers are really beginning to spike, starting over the July 4 holiday.
But, the beauty of data stories is that they are not just confined to tracking this pandemic or in journalism. Even in literature, they can be used to convey a clear message about the facts to the public or your readership, if the numbers are correctly pieced together or correct inferences are made. A good example of this is in the poem, “Counting” by Margarita Engle, where she writes about conducting the census and the faces behind each number.
“Counting”, by Margarita Engle
“I came to Panama planning to dig
the Eighth Wonder of the World,
but I was told that white men
should never be seen working
with shovels, so I took a police job,
and now I’ve been transferred
to the census.
I roam the jungle, counting laborers
who live in shanties and those who live
on the run, fugitives who are too angry
to keep working for silver in a system
where they know that others
earn gold.
When islanders see me coming,
they’re afraid of trouble, even though
I can’t arrest them anymore—now
all I need is a record of their names, ages,
homelands, and colors.
The rules of this census confound me.
I’m expected to count white Jamaicans
as dark and every shade of Spaniard
as semi-white, so that Americans
can pretend
there’s only one color
in each country.
How am I supposed to enumerate
this kid with the Cuban accent?
His skin is medium, but his eyes
are green.
And what about that Puerto Rican
scientist, who speaks like a New York
professor,
or the girl who says she doesn’t know
where she was born or who her parents
are—she could be part native, or part French,
Jamaican, Chinese …
She could even be part American,
from people who passed through here
way back
in gold rush days.
Counting feels just as impossible
as turning solid mountains
into a ditch.”
Another good example of this is “Numbers” by Mary Cornish, which connects the reader to the math behind daily life that most people don’t think about and how arithmetic is applicable:
“Numbers”, by Mary Cornish
I like the generosity of numbers.
The way, for example,
they are willing to count
anything or anyone:
two pickles, one door to the room,
eight dancers dressed as swans.
I like the domesticity of addition–
add two cups of milk and stir–
the sense of plenty: six plums
on the ground, three more
falling from the tree.
And multiplication’s school
of fish times fish,
whose silver bodies breed
beneath the shadow
of a boat.
Even subtraction is never loss,
just addition somewhere else:
five sparrows take away two,
the two in someone else’s
garden now.
There’s an amplitude to long division,
as it opens Chinese take-out
box by paper box,
inside every folded cookie
a new fortune.
And I never fail to be surprised
by the gift of an odd remainder,
footloose at the end:
forty-seven divided by eleven equals four,
with three remaining.
Three boys beyond their mothers’ call,
two Italians off to the sea,
one sock that isn’t anywhere you look.
Sincerely, Your Author,
Jessica A. McLean
The Rose 