Finding common ground: 109 national policy proposals with bipartisan support
Can a polarized public agree on anything? Dozens of things, it turns out, when we looked hard enough, at enough policy proposals.
About
For two decades in media, tech, and public opinion, I've specialized in uncovering data insights and communicating them to the public.
Selected work
Charity Rankings Giveth Less Than Meets the Eye
It may make you feel better to know that your charitable donations are going to organizations that have been highly rated by any number of online charity rankings. But these sites fail to quantify the most-important and most elusive charity measurement: success in achieving its mission.
Gun Deaths in America
Three colleagues and I won the 2017 Communication Award, online category, from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine for our reporting on gun violence in the U.S.
Yelp Local Economy Coronavirus Impact Report: March 20
Coronavirus is quickly reshaping every corner of the U.S. local economy — and Yelp data is reflecting the upheaval in real time.
Career
YouGov, 2021–present
U.S. politics editor and VP of data science
- Harris vs. Trump on the issues: Whose policies do voters prefer?
- Trust in Media 2024: Which news sources Americans trust — and which they think lean left or right
- AI doomsday worries many Americans. So does apocalypse from climate change, nukes, war, and more
- What Americans know — or think they know — about inflation
- YouGov's The Surveyor, a Substack newsletter
Yelp, 2017–2021
Data science editor
I became Yelp's first data science editor, tasked with sharing our data on billions of interactions between consumers and businesses with researchers and journalists, and publishing analyses on the Yelp blog. In October 2017, I launched the company's first local economic outlook, using our data to measure the health of small businesses nationwide and leading publicity of the report.
- How the Coronavirus Pandemic Has Affected Local Businesses Around the Country
- Yelp: Local Economic Impact Report, September 2020
- How businesses have reacted to COVID-19 using Yelp features
- Restaurant Ratings on Yelp Are Remarkably Consistent, No Matter Who's Writing Them, When, and Where
- Yelp's Local Economic Outlook: Using Data to Track Small Business Opportunity & Economic Health in America
FiveThirtyEight, 2013–2017
Lead writer for news; quantitative editor
I joined FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver's data-journalism website, after its acquisition by ESPN. As the site's lead writer for news, I focused on policing, polling, science, and sports. I served as quantitative editor, reviewing articles for logic, rigor, and transparency. I read like an editor, and I edit like a problem-solver, not a problem-identifier.
- The Polls Missed Trump. We Asked Pollsters Why.
- In the Shadow of Exile
- The Government Finally Has a Realistic Estimate of Killings by Police
- Were There 6 Percent More Murders Last Year, or 16 Percent?
- A Handful of Cities Are Driving 2016's Rise in Murders
- We Still Don't Know How Many People Died Because of Katrina
- A New Estimate of Killings by Police Is Way Higher — And Still Too Low
Links: archived copies (FiveThirtyEight closed in 2025)
Wall Street Journal, 2002–2013
The Numbers Guy columnist; sports, technology, and web news
I wrote the Numbers Guy column for the Wall Street Journal, analyzing newsy numbers, bogus and otherwise. The column began as an online-only feature and moved to print in 2007, alongside a regularly updated companion blog.
The goal was to put numbers up to the same scrutiny that good journalism applies to words.
- The Challenge of Drawing the Line on a Famine
- How Big Is That Widening Gyre of Floating Plastic?
- Online Warnings Mean Well, But the Numbers Don't Add Up
- The Numbers Guy blog
Links: archived copies, free to read
Awards
- Communication Award, online category, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, for FiveThirtyEight's “Gun Deaths in America,” with Maggie Koerth-Baker, Ben Casselman, and Anna Maria Barry-Jester
- Best in Business award, online column, Society of American Business Editors and Writers
- Communications Award, Joint Policy Board for Mathematics, for the Numbers Guy column and blog
- Column contest, second place, online category, National Society of Newspaper Columnists
Podcasts and other projects
- Thirty Love: Conversations About Tennis
- The Tennis Abstract Podcast
- Dangerous Exponents: A Covid-19 Podcast
- Varsity Letters, a monthly NYC sports reading event
- Gelf Magazine