{"id":12162,"date":"2010-11-05T14:37:42","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T13:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/?p=2428"},"modified":"2023-02-27T11:21:23","modified_gmt":"2023-02-27T10:21:23","slug":"where-idiots-get-their-data-other-idiots-dont-let-it-happen-in-your-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/where-idiots-get-their-data-other-idiots-dont-let-it-happen-in-your-company.html","title":{"rendered":"Where Idiots Get Their Data: Other Idiots (Don&#8217;t Let it Happen in Your Company)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The video below is an entertaining look at where global warming myths come from, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boingboing.net\/2010\/11\/04\/where-climate-myths.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">by science journalist Peter Hadfield<\/a>. At the risk of spoiling the video, the short answer is \u201cidiots who don\u2019t understand numbers\u201d.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xvMmPtEt8dc?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s an example from the video, where somebody claims in a blog post that global temperatures have been dropping, using this straight-line \u201canalysis\u201d:<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: 0px;\" title=\"image\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/image.jpg?resize=480%2C305&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"image\" width=\"480\" height=\"305\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>As the video makes clear, to work out what\u2019s really happening to the average global temperature, you have to do sophisticated statistical analysis to adjust for the cyclical trends and\/or doing a rolling average.<\/p>\n<p>But looking at the longer-term data set, it should have been pretty obvious that 1998 isn\u2019t a great year to start the comparison from (unless you\u2019re a willful global warming denier?)<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; border: 0px;\" title=\"image\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/image1.jpg?resize=480%2C333&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"image\" width=\"480\" height=\"333\" border=\"0\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The ramblings of these self-declared experts are then picked up and promoted throughout \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Internets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the internets<\/a>\u201d, and end up being widely believed (a good example of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Confirmation_bias\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">confirmation bias<\/a>). Thankfully, journalists like Peter and web sites like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.badscience.net\/about-dr-ben-goldacre\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ben Goldacre\u2019s<\/a> excellent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.badscience.net\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bad Science<\/a> blog do a great job of trying to minimize the damage caused by this disinformation.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, though the same thing happens in organizations, too \u2013 bad data is too often badly analyzed and simplified, then passed on as \u201ctruth\u201d to the rest of the organization. Just like on the internet, some people are happy to jump on data that confirm their existing biases, and may not be keen to figure out whether it\u2019s actually true or not (a former boss, <a href=\"http:\/\/kellblog.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dave Kellogg<\/a>, once told me the first question to ask any executive who requests a research study is \u201cdo you want a high number or a low number?\u201d).<\/p>\n<p>This problem will never go away, since it\u2019s firmly anchored in the weaknesses of human psychology.\u00a0The best long-term remedy is to <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.sap.com\/analytics\/2010\/10\/26\/to-know-your-business-requires-making-bi-pervasive\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">have pervasive business intelligence<\/a> (so there\u2019s less reliance on anecdotal evidence), to employ information analysts (the equivalent of Peter and Ben) in a <a href=\"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/bi-competency-centers-australia.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BI competency Center<\/a>, and to expose bad analysis to more people using <a href=\"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/2010\/02\/some-examples-of-how-to-use-12sprintscom-the-new-sap-businessobjects-collaborative-decision-making-platform.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">collaborative decision-making<\/a> environments like <a href=\"http:\/\/sapstreamwork.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SAP StreamWork<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bad data and bad conclusions are the scourge of &#8220;the internets&#8221; &#8212; don&#8217;t let it happen in your company, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[96,100,141,142,153,160,198,204,287,327,531,590,811,911],"class_list":["post-12162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-analysis","tag-analytics","tag-bad-analysis","tag-bad-data","tag-ben-goldacre","tag-bi","tag-business-analytics","tag-business-intelligence","tag-confirmation-bias","tag-data","tag-global-warming","tag-idiots","tag-peter-hadfield","tag-sap"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/globalwarmingcover.jpg?fit=668%2C300&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3X9RF-3aa","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21194,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12162\/revisions\/21194"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timoelliott.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}