Numlock Sunday: How To Read This Chart with Philip Bump

Photo by Logan Voss on Unsplash

By Walt Hickey

Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.

This week, I spoke to the great Philip Bump, who writes the newly independent newsletter How To Read This Chart. Bump departed the Washington Post earlier this year and relaunched the project independently, exactly the kind of bold leap for a data journalism newsletter that we have a lot of particular affection for here at Numlock.

I think the newsletter is a lot of fun and precisely the kind of thing that fans of Numlock might also enjoy. We talked all about data journalism, making and writing about charts, and what gets us the most excited these days about data on the internet.

Philip can be found at howtoreadthisch.art, which is a very charming domain.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Hey, Philip, thanks so much for coming back on.

I’m always happy to do so, sir.

You are an author, a newsletter writer, a fantastic journalist. I’m just such a big fan of your work. You have recently gone ind…