A dashboard shows traffic volume and mean response time, but the mean response time has not updated for more than an hour. What is the best way to verify the data's freshness?

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Data freshness is about when the data were last computed and loaded into your system. For a metric like mean response time, the dashboard reflects the result of a calculation script that updates that value. The most reliable way to verify freshness is to check when that calculation script last ran. If the last run was more than an hour ago, the metric is likely stale and explains why the dashboard isn’t updating. If the script ran recently, you can investigate why the dashboard still shows old results (such as a write failure or a delay in surface) but the last run time directly answers whether the data were refreshed.

Other options don’t directly confirm freshness: refactoring the codebase doesn’t tell you about the current refresh status; network connectivity issues might cause delays but don’t prove when the data were last updated; and counting calls with missing timestamps could indicate data quality problems but not the actual recency of the latest calculation.