Sing Along

Lessons in Corporate Analytics From Fall Out Boy

This Ain’t A Scene, Its A Music Parody

We’ve brought you lessons in history from Don McLean. We’ve created lessons for entrepreneurs from Nickleback. We even used Lady Gaga to talk databases. So it shouldn’t be a shock that we want to teach you a lesson in corporate analytics from Fall Out Boy.

I am an arms dealer
Fitting you with weapons in the form of data
And don’t really care which side wins
As long as the checks keep clearing
That’s just the business I’m in, yeah

Corporate analytics is a shadowy business. You can hate the politics. You can hate the game. You can hate the players. You can hate their toys. But in analytics — hate is just bias. It doesn’t serve and it doesn’t pay. One of those should really be meaningful to you, if you plan to have a career in Data Science & Analytics.

Fall Out Boy lyrics bring that home. In a time of weaponized data and data-driven storytelling, it is easy for an analyst to begin feeling like a digital arms dealer. In organizations with poor communication, I’ve seen the same analytic shop unknowingly fuel both sides of the argument. It is enough to bring some people to tears…

Get the t-shirt.

<We interrupt this chorus to bring you a t-shirt and nimbly avoid some questionable language.>

I’m not a shoulder to cry on
But I digress

I’m an analyst
And the lies I weave are oh so intricate,
Oh so intricate

I’m an analyst man
And the lies I weave are oh so intricate,
Oh so intricate

Lies and statistics. Lies with statistics. Darrell Huff would be proud. Analysts today can weave some of the most powerful lies. Many call them models. They predict nothing, but that hardly matters. The song plays on.

I wrote the gospel on faking it
(Your data looks sampled)
But the real hard facts have already been snuffed
(With weights and filters)
Through code we’re painting your trash gold while you sleep
Graphs distorted with axis and bars*,
No, control the s-s-s-tories

<*Or is it charts?>

Data is a currency, but it is not a hard one. Elements can be faked and sampled. Confirmation bias causes some of it, bad intentions the rest. Images are distorted, populations adjusted, and time periods are hand-selected in the name of controlling the story. Data fuels the race for power in the corporate world and the winners gain a lot of support.

This bandwagon’s full
Please, catch another

The story and the chorus repeat.

Yeah…
Whoa-oh

But a few good analyst sing a different tune. Fall Out Boy fans point out that the bad was not embracing this mentality. They were acting against it.

All the analysts who stand for facts
And all the girls who demand data they can trust
Analyze, until the truth comes out

Corrupting the data, controlling the story, and chasing quarterly gold are a fool’s game. Sure the party may rock for a little while, but the hangover is sure to suck. Of course, many analyst aren’t in this arms race for the long haul.

So enjoy a little Fall Out Boy. They don’t seem to take themselves too seriously. Neither do we. But please consider the situation they are singing about. The band was focused on the music scene, but like all useful art — the story can travel to a different scene… err, arms race. Thanks for reading!

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