About

Hi – I’m Julian Fry – being inspired by data has always been something very personal for me. The reason being – I like things to be logical and data driven. I especially try to see the big picture.

I was inspired to create this blog because of COVID. Its given me a good reason to put my analytical skills to the test largely because from the very early days of general media coverage it seemed so difficult to get reporting that was factual, simple and unbiased.

Here’s an example – when the early COVID coverage (from within the US) was focused on Italy and Spain this lead to a lot of fearful reporting – and predictions of catastrophe. Later when the US surpassed Italy and Spain in COVID deaths – the general media coverage was to focus on the raw numbers of cases and deaths – without recognizing that the US has a population 5 or 6 times larger than Italy or Spain. The so called ‘per capita’ numbers were not presented, or widely adopted by the MSM (main stream media).

As the COVID crisis developed, and lockdown ensued, I turned this into a learning opportunity. I used the time to develop my Excel Macro skills (using VBA) to powerfully analyze the data. Mostly I shared my insights on facebook – as a safe place among friends. Some of my friends suggested I write a book; others who were not on facebook became interested and so I thought a blog would be an efficient place for me to start and perhaps one day be the source of material for a book.

I’m thankful for some great data sources to base my analysis on. The NY Times and the World Health Organization provide the data in a simple download format and then my macros start chomping through the data. The insight is my own – but a word of caution. We all have our information biases. We try to think we don’t have them – but some of them may be invisible. Sometimes we search for information to confirm our hypothesis but find the opposite. Having said all that… my goal is to present data with less bias than what we are being delivered by mainstream media.

Why should you read this. I hope to give you data – NOT FEAR. I find a lot of mainstream media coverage focused on the negative – or taking a micro cluster of data and blowing that out of scale… in a sense inferring or extrapolating that across the US. 

I am really concerned that prolonged shutting down of the US economy (the world’s largest worth $23trillion each year) is a very costly proposition. The problem is HOW LONG? – and WHEN DO THE BRAKES COME OFF?. I hope to use data to drive the answers to that question. What’s clear is that ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL – and you’ll see that in my analysis.