Feltron Reports
My first thought when reviewing the Feltron Reports is that this guy has way too much time on his hands! But once I actually looked at what he was graphing, it struck me how looking at trends, even in our own life, says so much about us. For instance, what Nicholas Felton chose to track: music, food, beverages, travel says so much about who he is and what is important to him. His choice of restaurants shows an eclectic taste and I found myself wondering why he tracks his beverage consumption so carefully. Does he worry that he drinks too much alcohol or caffeine? Or is it that beverages are so easily trackable? And why did I even notice that in all those pages of graphs and pictures?
If nothing else, I took away the thought that data leads to questions. A good historian (or a good scientist) knows how important it is to ask questions. The Feltron reports left me with many questions and not many answers. Data, by itself is very interesting but without a framework, it’s just that–interesting. It can’t really tell us answers. It needs an organizer who asks good questions and then uses the data to answer them. It also tells me that who collects the data and why he chose what he did is very important to the big picture.
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