Marvel Them With Questionable Causality— The Lessons of Avengers Infinity War
Episode VII— Superhero Lessons In Analytics, Season 2
Sometimes you spend a few hours looking at dazzling visualizations, listening to engaging dialogue, and seeing a buzz-worthy array — only to walk away and think “why would that happen again?”. This could be your reaction after leaving a corporate boardroom or Avengers: Infinity War. In that respect, they have a lot in common. Warning — spoilers.
Entertainment Bias and Confirmation Bias also have a lot in common. Both are about telling you the story you want to hear. If you ignore the former, you will get an enjoyable evening of entertainment. If you ignore the latter — budget issues, poor investment, and other nasty things will follow.
Selling either can depend on a very reliable list of tricks and techniques. Let’s go through the ones they have in common.
Stunning Visuals
CGI and Dataviz are both very useful technologies for advancing a story. They draw you in, help you suspend disbelief, and occasionally distract the audience from some otherwise troublesome short comings.
Adjusting an angle, exaggerating some scale, and a little selective editing can go a long way to covering a story line with holes. Conversely, bad CGI and Dataviz can easily kill an otherwise amazing tale. The audience can just as easily become distracted by the poor quality of your visuals. Both technologies can be good or bad. Both can put huge dollars on the line.
Sometimes You Feel Compelled To Force The Story You Want
In finance, they call it goal seeking. In analytics, it can take the form of confirmation bias or false correlation. In this movie, it takes the form of giving only Scarlet Witch the ability to destroy the stone. Why? Because she is in love with the superhero that destroying the stone would kill! Wait… what?
In both analytics and the movies, this can cause otherwise random events to be… well, not random at all. Why was it Peter and not Tony? Because the goal was to create a more compelling story line. Or maybe it really was just the luck of the draw?
By the way, why half of the people? What was Thanos fixation with half. Why not 1/3rd or 3/4ths? Ah, the appeal of round numbers! It happens more in the movies, but only slightly. Simple makes a great story line, but sometimes simple seems very forced. Was it in Infinity War? You can decide.
Format and Context Matter
If you are an avid comic reader or just follow Greg Anderson on Quora, maybe these things seemed less arbitrary or convenient to the plot? Extra context can help a movie or an analysis. Format can affect them both as well — written formats often contain more details and pertinent information. Movies and powerpoints often edit lots of stuff out, or leave it for the footnotes.
If All Else Fails, Marvel Them With Buzz, Budget, and Charisma
This final analogy requires more of a stretch. Infinity War packed in more celebrities than even the X-men, although minus any X-men. It was one of the highest budget movies ever made. Who has time to find plot holes with all of that… well, always someone, but given the box office — no one was trying too hard. It is a recipe that works in analytics, too.
I have witnessed many an analytic presentation that was built on buzzwords, huge testing budgets, and testimonials of influential people. That stuff often has the same effect. In fact, if you can get Chris Hemsworth and Robert Downey Jr to present your findings, I bet few in the audience will raise many objections… at least until later.
At some point, when the dazzling visuals are done, when the charisma of the celebrities and buzz have faded — people start asking more questions. Perhaps, at first, it is just the contrarians or the highly critical — but if your story needed these tricks to cover too many holes, more will follow.
For the record, I enjoyed Infinity War. I suspect most of you did, too. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t capable of teaching a critical lesson in analytics. Thanks for reading!
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