How do you know? Creating a space for public discussions of information literacy and non-neutrality in data

It seems ironic that in an era of big data, truth is even more elusive. To make better choices about how to manage our lives, work, and environment, we need to use information to guide us. But even with great data, humans don’t always make great choices- even our most rational examinations of the numbers are fundamentally human, shaped by culture, prior experience, and our biases. We are creating a podcast to create a dialogue around the non-neutrality of data. These discussions rarely happen when people learn quantitative skills, creating a system that reinforces inequity and prioritizes established ways-of-knowing. At this workshop, we will discuss these ideas with participants and record their perspectives, which will be woven into podcast episodes to help tell the human story of data. Participants should come ready to share ideas about how they turn data into knowledge in their work.