What is a trustworthy data source, and how do you know it when you see it? Fact Forward reveals how everyone who produces, shares, or consumes data can become more data-savvy and make better decisions -- and why that's crucial to our shared future. We once thought of data analysts as a highly trained, specialized group. Today, each of us is a data analyst. We all generate data, assess and interpret data, and share and discuss data. In our day-to-day interactions with our many devices, with media and businesses, and with each other, each of us is constantly bombarded with rapidly changing, newly emerging types of data. Fact Forward celebrates triumphs of effective data analysis, like the proof that cigarettes cause lung cancer and the data journalism that revealed new facts about California's drought. It also shows how questionable data contributed to debacles like the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, the flawed justification for the Second Gulf War, the debunked link between vaccines and autism, and the biased inflation figures that destroyed Argentina's economic credibility. Based on the extensive experience of Dan Gaylin, President and CEO of the objective, nonpartisan global research organization NORC at the University of Chicago, Fact Forward demonstrates how effective data must be sound, transparent, and free from bias. Written for both lay readers and sophisticated researchers, the book explains not only how to evaluate data, but how we, as a society, can promote data literacy and build the national data infrastructure to support smart decisions. From news reports to social media to the frontiers of AI, the quality of data increasingly determines the quality of all of our decisions. Fact Forward will equip each of us with the increasingly essential tools to be data-savvy.