The Fun of Researching History!
I found a link to this site on Instapundit. It’s the rather lengthy story of a pedestrian bridge that appears to have no purpose, and the lengths to which a man went to find out the original reason for the pathway.
Trust me, it’s absolutely fascinating.
It reminded me of why I loved studying history in college. The records were contradictory, missing, and often incomplete. The search was the fun of it; where could I next go to find out more about the missing information?
That was not just a passion of mine. The skills I learned:
Data analysis - what was reliable, what was useful, and what data was useless/inaccurate
Creation and maintenance of databases
Programming the interface for users of that database
Managing the output, putting it into form for reports
Explaining the meaning of the data to non-techy, non-mathy types in words they could understand
Writing a report that puts the data into context, and links the raw data to meaningful decision-making
I used those skills in multiple jobs after graduation. The process gave me my first real experiences in digging out hidden truths in public documents (which has been very useful in reading legislative bills and business reports, and sifting out the bull$hit from the disguised information in press releases).
Recently, I corrected claims that illegal aliens would not be eligible for health insurance at public cost - here’s the link. I was able to manage this, as I knew where I would find the exact wording that permitted it in CMS (Center for Medicare Services, the agency in charge of parsing the details on eligibility). They were hoist on their own carefully chosen words.