The U.S. Census Bureau produces voluminous statistical data on most aspects of people’s and businesses’ lives. These statistics advance our democracy, they tell us who we are as a nation. They allow us to function as a society, to govern at federal, state and local levels, to identify and address problems and inequities in society, be they national issues or problems at the neighborhood level.

But how “good” are these data? How good do they need to be? And what exactly makes data or a statistic “good”? These questions will be answered with storytelling, and you’ll come away thinking differently about the data we use, and the data driven world we live in.