GETTING REAL
Data Analytics: The Three Most Important People in the Room
The first to present his case seems right, until another comes forward and questions him. — Proverbs 18:16
It happens on Wall Street. It happens in Washington. And it happens in board rooms across the country. What we’re talking about is the misreading and misuse of data. This article is directed toward online marketing decisions based on analytics.
It’s self-evident that without accurate facts, you’re usually not going to make good decisions, except by accident. Unfortunately, we’re so inundated with data that learning how to determine what data has value is a skill in and of itself. The information may be accurate, but those reading the data may lack the skills, or be too biased, to translate it into a useful course of action. This happens every day.
In 1954 a journalist named Darrell Huff wrote a spicy little volume titled How to Lie with Statistics. He showed how the statistician produces stats which get handed off to spinners and re-spinners within the organization and, in the case of publicly traded companies, in the media.
Because we live in a “scientific age” where numbers have become treated as sacred, everything has to be supported by data…
