“An anecdote is nothing more than a short story about something. But anecdote has become an epithet. “That’s just anecdotal” is a common way of dismissing qualitative data. . . . It’s just an anecdote when told in isolation and heard by amateurs. But I’m a professional anecdote collector. If you know how to listen, systematically collect, and rigorously analyze anecdotes, the patterns revealed are windows into what’s going on in the world. It’s true that to the untrained ear, an anecdote is just a casual story, perhaps amusing, perhaps not. But to the professionally trained and attuned ear, an
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