Turning over rocks

This summer, Data 4 The People has three Data Storytelling Fellows. This program is very important to me.

I can write five days a week, and this email list can grow, slowly but surely, over time. But there is learning by seeing (or in this case, reading), and there is learning by doing. Doing always wins. Working the data yourself, in search of truth, is the pinnacle of education. This is why we gently encourage you to replicate our work, despite your busy lives. If you care about something, don't take our word for it. Do the work yourself, and you will truly understand.

Three brave students accepted that challenge this summer: one high schooler, one undergrad, and one recent PhD grad. Each is exploring a topic that hurts, or has the potential to hurt, our American brothers and sisters: the rising cost of college, substance abuse, the risks to social security. And each is working to bring that topic to life with data.

Today, I couldn't be more thrilled to share an early piece of Johnathan Pickens's project with you. Johnathan is a rising high school senior at The Miami Valley School with a passion for community service. His work on local workforce development last year inspired me. We started talking, and that led to us working together.

In the coming months, you'll see the full scope of his project. It is breathtaking. I am not exaggerating when I say it has the potential to help every high school student in this country, and to steer policy toward making higher education more affordable. It's that ambitious.

But the neat thing about data work is that sometimes you end up with valuable, publishable work you never expected. That's what happened here. Johnathan did something simple — though not easy — that I never thought to do. He took the main database for his project, a messy spreadsheet that is nearly impossible to pivot or sort, and turned it into an interactive tool. No fancy math. No complex joins. Just data transformed into insight.

Johnathan built an easy way to sort the Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational pay database for 830 jobs, by city. All of a sudden, I could learn from this data in a way that wasn't possible before.

I could see income inequality in a way I hadn't before. Try it for where you live, ideally on a laptop, where you can sort the full table. Sort by number of employees, high to low, and scan the median wages. They're likely very low. Most people living around you are barely scraping by. Then sort by median wage, high to low. The numbers may shock you, especially for doctors. I expected physicians in NYC or California to make a lot. That tracks. But the 50 "Surgeons, All Other" in Toledo, OH earn a median salary of $618,680, while the median pay for all workers in Toledo is just $58,900. It's eye-opening, even for someone who understands exactly how the warped incentives in U.S. health care produced this.

I was so taken with this tool, still a work in progress as Johnathan explores the project, that I decided to publish it today.

So please, interact with this new tool. I can assure you, you'll learn something about this country, and about where you live. And it's a reminder that we don't always need the fanciest analysis to help others. Sometimes innovation lies just under one of the rocks on our path up a steep mountain — just waiting there, for someone to turn it over. Most of us are so focused on hiking to the summit, where we believe the real prize lives. Maybe it does. But Johnathan's work reminded me that it's not all about the top. Value lies everywhere on the journey. He has just started his hike, and he was aware enough to turn over each rock along the way. He found insight where I could not.

Explore Johnathan's work. You'll learn something about where you live. And maybe it will remind you to stop and pick up the rocks along the way, as you charge toward whatever finish line you're chasing.