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Data Is Lying to You and You're Listening

Ozzie_osman 6y ago
Totally agree. Data is not a substitute for good judgment, or for deeply understanding your users and their pain points or your industry. You can use data to guide decisions but as soon as you try to rely on it completely, the part of your brain that does critical reasoning just turns off.
onecommentman 6y ago
“Just because something is easy to measure doesn’t mean it’s insightful. Just because something can’t be measured easily doesn’t mean it isn’t.” But if you can’t or don’t measure “it”, there is a very good chance it is because you really don’t understand it well...which is a problem. Your, perhaps misguided, belief that you have actual insight is what is problematic. Hard to manage or meaningfully intervene in something for which you don’t have a good, accurate mental model...nouns (via data) and verbs (via process flows and other formalisms). Instead of using the usual management quote by Harrington, let me cite Lord Kelvin “When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.” https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/166961-when-you-can-measure-what-you-are-speaking-about-and https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/166961-when-you-can-measure... There are important things that cannot be easily measured, or objectively measured to any significant degree. But you spend significant money and resources on these things at your (or Society’s) peril, because you have no idea whether you are doing any good. (Except to those who directly benefit financially, ego, etc.. If you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can absolutely count on the support of Paul. Taking Paul’s advice on these matters might be unwise.) As an aside, you may not want to go full-bore Taylorism, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management but higher education processes are amenable to measurement. The fundamental problem is it is in no one’s best personal or political interest in Higher Education to actually measure, much less test and improve, anything at a process level.

Totally agree. Data is not a substitute for good judgment, or for deeply understanding your users and their pain points or your industry. You can use data to guide decisions but as soon as you try to rely on it completely, the part of your brain that does critical reasoning just turns off.

onecommentman 6y ago

“Just because something is easy to measure doesn’t mean it’s insightful. Just because something can’t be measured easily doesn’t mean it isn’t.” But if you can’t or don’t measure “it”, there is a very good chance it is because you really don’t understand it well...which is a problem. Your, perhaps misguided, belief that you have actual insight is what is problematic. Hard to manage or meaningfully intervene in something for which you don’t have a good, accurate mental model...nouns (via data) and verbs (via process flows and other formalisms). Instead of using the usual management quote by Harrington, let me cite Lord Kelvin “When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.” https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/166961-when-you-can-measure-what-you-are-speaking-about-and https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/166961-when-you-can-measure... There are important things that cannot be easily measured, or objectively measured to any significant degree. But you spend significant money and resources on these things at your (or Society’s) peril, because you have no idea whether you are doing any good. (Except to those who directly benefit financially, ego, etc.. If you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can absolutely count on the support of Paul. Taking Paul’s advice on these matters might be unwise.) As an aside, you may not want to go full-bore Taylorism, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management but higher education processes are amenable to measurement. The fundamental problem is it is in no one’s best personal or political interest in Higher Education to actually measure, much less test and improve, anything at a process level.