There's a great lesson here for marketers: the prospect can be convinced with the simple presence of graphs and data and measurements. Even just the mere prese

There's a great lesson here for marketers: the prospect can be convinced with the simple presence of graphs and data and measurements. Even just the mere presence of data and data visuals is enough to legitimize what you're selling in the eyes of the prospect. When the prevailing religion is Scientism, data bestows that blessing of authority and legitimacy upon whatever it is you're trying to sell. Show and tell whatever conclusions you'd like from the data - the soundness of the logic supporting that conclusion is irrelevant. All that matters is you did the ritual of measuring and data-gathering and graph-ifying and putting it on display for the prospect. There's a great book, How to Lie with Statistics, that covers this particular case, but demonstrates other popular ways in which data and data visuals are manipulated to sell things.