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The Secret Laws of Analytic Projects
For April Fool's Day, I present the Secret Laws of Analytic Projects:
The First Certainty Principle: C~ 1/K; Certainty is inversely proportional to knowledge.
A person who really understands data and analysis will understand all the pitfalls and limitations, and hence be constantly caveating what they say. Somebody who is simple, straightforward, and 100% certain usually has no idea what they are talking about.
The Second Certainty Principle: A ~ C; The attractiveness of results is directly proportional to the certainty of the presenters.
Decision-makers are attracted to certainty. Decision-makers usually have no understanding of the intricacies of data mining. What they often need is simply someone to tell them what they should do.
Note that #1 and #2 together cause a lot of problems.
The Time-Value Law: V ~ 1/P; The value of analysis is inversely proportional to the time-pressure to produce it.
If somebody want something right away, that means they want it on a whim not real need. The request that comes in at 4:00 for a meeting at 5:00 will be forgotten by 6:00. The analysis that can really effect a business has been identified through careful thought, and people are willing to wait for it. (A cheery thought for those late-night fire drills.)
The First Bad Analysis Law: Bad analysis drives out good analysis.
Bad analysis invariably conforms to people's pre-conceived notions, so they like hearing it. It's also 100% certain in it's results, no caveats, nothing hard to understand, and usually gets produced first. This means that good analysis always has an uphill fight.
The Second Bad Analysis Law: Bad Analysis is worse than no analysis.
If there is no analysis, people muddle along by common sense which usually works out OK. To really mess things up requires a common direction which requires persuasive analysis pointing in that direction. If that direction happens to be into a swamp, it doesn't help much.
Tactical Logic Blog
The First Certainty Principle: C~ 1/K; Certainty is inversely proportional to knowledge.
A person who really understands data and analysis will understand all the pitfalls and limitations, and hence be constantly caveating what they say. Somebody who is simple, straightforward, and 100% certain usually has no idea what they are talking about.
The Second Certainty Principle: A ~ C; The attractiveness of results is directly proportional to the certainty of the presenters.
Decision-makers are attracted to certainty. Decision-makers usually have no understanding of the intricacies of data mining. What they often need is simply someone to tell them what they should do.
Note that #1 and #2 together cause a lot of problems.
The Time-Value Law: V ~ 1/P; The value of analysis is inversely proportional to the time-pressure to produce it.
If somebody want something right away, that means they want it on a whim not real need. The request that comes in at 4:00 for a meeting at 5:00 will be forgotten by 6:00. The analysis that can really effect a business has been identified through careful thought, and people are willing to wait for it. (A cheery thought for those late-night fire drills.)
The First Bad Analysis Law: Bad analysis drives out good analysis.
Bad analysis invariably conforms to people's pre-conceived notions, so they like hearing it. It's also 100% certain in it's results, no caveats, nothing hard to understand, and usually gets produced first. This means that good analysis always has an uphill fight.
The Second Bad Analysis Law: Bad Analysis is worse than no analysis.
If there is no analysis, people muddle along by common sense which usually works out OK. To really mess things up requires a common direction which requires persuasive analysis pointing in that direction. If that direction happens to be into a swamp, it doesn't help much.
Tactical Logic Blog
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Mark Richards on -
These are supposed to be a secret? From whom?
(Nice job!)
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Permalink Reply by Mehran Gomari on -
Ed,
I enjoyed your secret laws and here's one for a Good Analysis Law:
A good analysis passes through three periods:
• It can’t be done.
• It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing.
• I knew it was a good idea all along.
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Permalink Reply by AJAY OHRI on -
1 The more important the data mining project , the smaller the budget assigned to it.
2 Big decision makers have egos bigger than the size of the clean database they have,
rather than the other way round.
3 Good Analytics softwares cost good money but save time.Free Analytics softwares take good time to learn. Choose software after determining who pays for it AND the time.
These laws are good. I have linked to them at my site.
www.decisionstats.com
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Permalink Reply by Eric Ramos on -
It's reaffirming to hear that the First Certainty Principle is sound with people who understand the data, however often a nuisance for higher management to contemplate the reasoning behind the footnoting.
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Permalink Reply by Amit Sharma on
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I loved #1 & #2. However, the "certain types" are also required in most situations to keep driving things forward.
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Permalink Reply by John A Morrison on -
fantastic, very useful
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Permalink Reply by Breanna Wigle on -
Thank you for sharing. Very cathartic!
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Permalink Reply by Alex berry on
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Rings so true - take it too literally though and one might hardly make any progress at all. It's a good job that a large part of the predictive modelling world is about generalisation.
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