Data driven

My job has taught me lots of things, including how to read dashboards and data visualizations. Generally, this knowledge is useful. Sometimes, though, a little knowledge is dangerous. 

Every morning, for example, I do what every sane person does on a beautiful summer morning, which is to check the overnight COVID numbers. What’s the positivity rate today? What’s the percentage change since yesterday? Up or down? How many new cases? How many hospitalized? How many have died? I have no idea how much money is in my checking account but I know how many people in Maryland have the ‘rona, and I know where the micro hotspots are by ZIP code. How is this knowledge useful for me, a person with no medical or public health background? I don’t know, but staying informed gives me an illusory sense of control. 

Although I can interpret a dashboard pretty well, I never could read weather radar. That, however, is not stopping me from tracking the radar for Tropical Storm Isaias, checking every five minutes to see how bad it’s going to be in Maryland when this very early named storm makes landfall. The predictions are all over the place, depending on where you look. 

As my project team likes to say, data can tell stories, and it can answer questions. Right now, it’s answering the age-old question: How much will things suck today? More today than yesterday? But not half as much as tomorrow? The plague is already here, and the storm is imminent. Will pestilence be far behind? I’m sure that there’s a Power BI dashboard somewhere that can answer that question. We have your live, interactive, real-time visualization, right here.