Word is Bond
I love the saying “word is bond”. It beautifully captures the importance of trust and social capital in an environment where de facto property rights are largely non-existant, huge informational asymmetries exist, and monitoring is very costly (see “The Wire”, “Poor Economics” by Duflo and Bannerjee, and “The Market for Lemons” by Akerlof).
Honesty, transparency, and attention to detail are the most important traits to have when working with data.The reason being is, when you work with numbers, 99.9% of the value of an analysis is what’s under the hood, stuff you never see or even think about (ask a mechanic or an accountant). It’s simply impossible to thoroughly audit all of the analysis presented to a decision-maker, even when you explain your methodology and provide your datasets and code. For the reader, there has to be no doubt that you cut any corners.Word is bond.
The people who rely on your research or analysis to make decisions trust you, and if you break that trust, you can’t earn it back. People sometimes make mistakes and that’s fine. But dishonesty and a lack of attention to detail are deal-breakers.
So think of Raekwon The Chef and Ghostface the next time you’re running the numbers.Double and triple check your work and never let deadlines dictate the quality of your analysis, absolutely no rushing (you can have fast and high-level, or slow and in-depth, that’s it). Word is bond. Peace.
