A 60-Year Measure of Mattering

We encounter charts, graphics, and statistics, and rather than interrogating them, we fold them into what we already believe, rarely stopping to ask what's actually being measured, or whether the official interpretation is the only one. We see what we see and move on. I understand the impulse. Most data is exactly what it claims to be, and folding is faster than thinking. Most of the time nothing is lost. Most of the time. The gap, between what something officially measures and what it actually records, is my contrarian sweet spot. What I call narrative empiricism. Real data, reliably collected, grounded in actual measurement, that's the empiricism. The story that data tells about the world we're living in, and the one taking shape whether we're watching or not, that's the narrative. Good evidence, interrogated rather than filed, stops being measurement and starts being meaning. The University of Michigan Survey of Consumers is one of my favorite recurring datasets, and one I thought…