What do you think of Capital and Ideology? Piketty posits some theories/hypothesis with caveats throughout and has a lot of data for certain countries and time periods, 75% of the book is history through the lens he is examining.

I can understand being critical of this particular page, but more generally:

> How can you "understand" anything from a page which provides no analysis and presents numbers with no caveats?

Presumably because one is able to do one's own analysis and think for themselves. Everything starts out as raw numbers.

> How can I trust that these charts aren't cherry picked?

Can you ever?

> Can you ever?

If we're talking "generally": Yes, we can trust that charts aren't cherry picked by reading the analysis. A proper analysis would include argumentation for why this metric is critical and why this chart is interesting.

This criticism applies to anything that isn’t formal mathematical proof.

I asked for analysis and source assessment, none of which is part of a formal mathematical proof.

Analysis can be misleading too.