A very short interview, and so a very short note here. But Malcolm Gladwell, the mega-bestselling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers, has come down firmly for more math in the media. (Not more of this blog specifically, that is, but actually more math in the media.) Specifically, in this Time magazine interview, he advocates:
Aspiring journalists should stop going to journalism programs and go to some other kind of grad school. If I was studying today, I would go get a master’s in statistics, and maybe do a bunch of accounting courses and then write from that perspective…. Journalism has to get smarter.
Statistics is getting some good press lately. See also the earlier NY Times article “For Today’s Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics.”