How can global warming be real when there is so much snow and cold weather? That's what some people wondered after a couple of massive snowstorms buried Washington, DC, in the winter of 2009-2010. Politicians across the capital made jokes and built igloos as they disputed the existence of climate change. Some concluded the planet simply could not be warming with all the snow on the ground. These comments frustrated Joseph Roam, a physicist and climate expert with the Center for American Progress. He spent weeks turning data into information and graphs to educate anyone who would listen as to why this reasoning was incorrect. Climate change is all about analyzing data, turning it into information to detect trends. You cannot observe climate change by looking out the window; you have to review decades of weather data with advanced tools to really understand the treads. Increasingly we see politicians, economists, and newscasters taking tough issues and boiling them down to simplistic arguments over what the data mean, each interpreting the data and spinning the data to support their views and agendas. You need to understand the data and turn them into useful information or else you will not understand when someone is telling the truth and when you are being lied to. Brainstorm two or three types of data economists use to measure the economy.

Questions

1. How do they turn the data into information?

2. What Issues do they encounter when attempting to measure the economy?

3. As a manager, what do you need to understand when reading or listening to economic and business reports?