How The Data Will Hurt You
How The Data Will Hurt You
By chris danilo on Jun 04, 2018 05:00 am
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Blockbuster said, “our data show that people still like the experience of walking into a store and choosing a movie.”
The FBI had all the data they needed on September 10th in their Sentinel program, but they were unable to communicate on time.
So what happened?
BLOCKBUSTER
People like sitting on the couch and watching Netflix for $7 more than going into a store. And Blockbuster’s billion-dollar empire is down to one remaining store somewhere in Alaska.
They thought they had all of the data in front of them but weren’t looking at the whole picture.
FBI
The FBI didn’t know what they knew. They had everything they needed to put the case together but their Virtual Case File system couldn’t help different departments put the picture together.
They had records of Al Qaeda activists entering the country in the weeks and months before 9/11. One office was suspicious of a specific terrorist.
Another department wondered why so many suspicious foreigners were getting flight training. Another had someone on a watch list but never told anyone. No one in the Bureau ever put it all together
The Moral of the Story
Obviously, we can see here that having the data is important, but processing and analyzing it is equally important for a successful outcome (at least in a zero-sum game like these examples).
The issue with the “Information Age” that we’re living in now is that we’re flooded with what looks like data. Yet, scientific literacy in the United States is surprisingly low considering the resources available.
I’m not talking about fake news and Twitter bots.
I’m talking about what people choose to believe without inspecting the source of information.
The insights that can come along with analyzing data are just as inaccessible as if we had no data at all, and sometimes worse.
The data are useless if we don’t have the critical thinking skills to detect what’s b.s. and what’s valuable.
The data are dangerous if we mistake b.s. for value and proliferate it.
2 Minute Action
What is a primary source? Secondary source?
What does “empirically supported” mean?
It takes 2 minutes to look up these definitions. Hopefully, they help you ask better questions about the information that enters your view.
It’s up to you to define your world-view and perspective.
Use data.
Be relentless in your pursuit of the truth.
And when you err, err on the side of helping others.
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