Data spin.

It rules everything. Data collecting, data displaying, and interpreting all those pretty colored charts.

In my world, "data" is a dirty word. I don't mind strong words. I don't mind profanity. I use strong words myself. But the word "data?" Even thinking that word brings an instant tightening of every muscle in my body, a spring-loading, while I fight the impulse to unload on the person who used that word and cram their data and their charts down their slimy throats.

I'm a teacher. Since the standards and accountability movement came to power with their high-stakes testing, their authoritarian punitive regime, my profession is more about data than about my actual students. Early on in the process, way back in the mid 90s, we had staff development in which it was explained to us that we had to think about students, not as people, but as data to manipulate.

That's where that visceral reaction got its start.

Since then, I've watched while politicians and think tanks paid for data and manipulated it, knowing all along how easy it is to spin data to make it say just about anything you want. I learned that long before, as an undergrad in statistics and psychological measurement courses.

Data can be meaningful, depending on how it's collected, how it's analyzed, and what uses it's put to. It's also a very lucrative tool for powermongers and propagandists.

Of course, it's not just education that is being poisoned by data spin. It's used to convince the voting public of all kinds of things.

Data can be spun to show whatever, depending upon what factors are included, or not.

I've browsed through some conversations, here and elsewhere today, about unemployment numbers. One side is dancing, the other stomping. What's real?

I have to discount both the dancers and the stompers. Would Democrats ignore inconvenient factors to dance about those figures because it's politically expedient? Hell yes. Would Republicans ignore inconvenient factors in their rabid urge to attack? Hell yes. Would both sides do exactly the reverse if the data called for it? Hell yes.

Whatever the numbers show, it's a good idea to look at all the factors.