Questioning the Data

There is an old saying: Curiosity killed the cat. This is often mentioned as a way to highlight to individuals who ask too many questions that they may not like the answers they get. People tend to hear this quote and think that curiosity is seen as a bad thing, because it may have unintended consequences. However, did you know this is not the full saying? The saying goes on: but satisfaction brought it back. This highlights that people should embrace curiosity, even if it does have some unintended consequences.

This saying highlights the critical data literacy skill of questioning. The most important part of the process of working with data is ensuring you understand what is being asked. There’s no such thing as asking too many questions when making decisions using data.

In this chapter, we’re going to cover the following main topics:

• Being curious and critical by asking questions
• Questioning based on the decision-making stage
...