What is Reddit's opinion of How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

I understand that.

The map is trying to highlight the lack of rain within new jersey, in line with the fact that new jerseyans have been living through a drought. Highlighting the areas with 6 inches of rain, is also misleading because, despite being the 'most' this month, it is still not substanial.

If the point of the map is to describe heavy rain fall, than yes red is good. But a the moment what problem are we highlighting by visualizing that south jersey has six inches of rain.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Charts-Lie-Getting-Information/dp/1324001569/

There are books on some of these topics, like "How Charts Lie", which are probably useful for the general public. However, covering such a broad set of topics comprehensively is beyond the scope of a semester or two of classes, and frankly out of reach given the limited intellectual maturity of virtually all high school students. It doesn't just take book learning, but also practice and experience. Students need to spend a lot of time reading several news sources (or other media) spanning a diversity of perspectives to understand how to process the world well. That requires prioritizing the effort (meaning less time for other things like TikTok) but also a willingness to think calmly, practice civil discourse, get out of echo chambers, and so on. That's a high cost, and that's before even getting to the harder pieces like statistical literacy, which even most graduate students get wrong in their work simply because it is challenging and requires rigor.

My biggest fear however, is that such a program, even if well intentioned, can be weaponized. State education departments, local school boards, and teachers will all use such a program as a vehicle to push their own politics and ideologies. Unfortunately education has broadly (meaning not just college but also K-12) become very homogeneous and is actively hostile towards a diversity of views. For such programs to be truly successful, they need to recognize this problem and value diversity of thought above ideological indoctrination. That means selection of case studies must balance across multiple issues and not just paint one political side as good or bad. It also means that many issues that often are seen as black and white need to be studied as the complex issues they are, with truth and falsehoods on all sides. My gut feeling is that a public education system, subject to political processes and other pressures, cannot achieve such a balance.