Recent data articles and conclusions on them

If you look at two different recent articles about data (one from the NY Times and one from Information Management) they are both making a similar point.  Data can interesting and can be very useful to make some kind of conclusion, but you have to think carefully about what you are trying to show and if it is reasonable to make that conclusion.

New York Times article - How not to be misled by the jobs report here from The Upshot.

Information Management Blog - Is Fitness Data not fit for the purpose of use? here.

I can see in the NY Times article that many different conclusions can be made with the data, noise needs to be carefully removed from the data to be able to come to a better line fit using R².  With the Fitness Data care needs to be taken to ensure that there is enough data to come to any sound conclusion at all.