Wharton: Statistics are guilty til proven innocent

After reading the post title, I know you're shocked to hear of actual measurements being influenced by the agenda of those doing the measuring. Here's the nut graph:

K@W: ...a key to minimizing the misuse of statistics involves intuitive plausibility, or understanding the researcher's approach and the interplay of forces. "It's important to know what the drivers are behind the variables," he says. "Once that is established, an observer can better understand and establish causality."

Intuitive Plausibility. Sort of a fancy way, I think, of saying buyer beware the bald man selling hair tonic, and watch out for the bushy-headed one, too.

Wouldn't "Motivational Spelunking" have been more descriptive and useful? The "interplay of forces" and variables so blandly referenced do tend to have some real teeth. "Forces" like what? Maybe how much heat you're getting from marketing to show the new BrainMaster 3000 really does improve cognitive skills? Or perhaps, how some primary states do or don't count and why Crown Royal is really akin to Jim Beam?

Yeah, lies, damned lies and whatnot. But, is this always nefarious? Depends, doesn't it? Often, on whether your compass is the Boy Scout Oath or the job that cuts the paycheck that in turn puts braces on your kids' teeth. Yeah, everyone wants to go to heaven, but the ticket price is hell. Maybe more interesting is, Is this inevitable? And, what does it cost us?

Well, here's a questionable stat cobbled together by yours truly:



For the purposes and the point I needed to make with this slide, I did a bit of guessing, reading, Googling and extrapolation to come up with an 1850 number, presuming small town America. (Impressions x Channels + Social & Work Interactions x Venues, etc and so on). The bigger 2007 number is cobbled together from various modern, presumably more statistically rigorous sources like the American Marketing Association and the Better Business Bureau. Still, I disclaim it as guesswork, however educated. But the point I was making was implicit in the gueswork, and had the feel of "truth" to the hearers because it provides an "intuitively plausible" answer for their vague anxiety:

• Why are we so numb to change indicators?
• With so much info, why aren't we making smarter choices?
• How did we get to the place where emotion plays such a large part in seemingly rational people's decision-making?

More graphic junk



Yes, the stuff in the beige can is often empirically sound. But there's just so damn much of it, all claiming Grade-A quality analysis. Who has the time to sort out it's inevitable Bell Curve of actual quality? Likely, none of us. So, we go with the best friend, longest-term mentor and referee we've got--our gut, our limbic bullshit meter. We go with what 'feels' rightest and bestest. (Mike, of Spooky Action can tell you about Lovaglia's Law on this count.)

Sometimes the collected experiences of that "gut" have done enough and are fearless, humble and secure enough to yield wisdom. Sometimes, it's the experiential equivalent of a 16-year old saying "been there, done that." Moretimes--is that a word?--the hailstorm of information causes a fantastical pinch in the middle, our bell curve becoming an hourglass turned on its side. We are intimately engaged and familiar with the fantastical and the fearsome, the wildly idealistic or the aberrantly grotesque--but, with the practical and pedantic, not so much. We've been there and done that, earned that and deserve that--whatever that is--even when we haven't.

Geez, I started out scribbling on statisticians pointing at the open manholes of statistical analysis and now we're at the edge of pondering it's much older analogue--the effectiveness of cognitive assessment filtered through the clouds of self-image and self-interest or, whadayacallit... Intuitive Plausibility.

Double geez. Time to call in a Pro. Here's Grant McCracken, friend of this blog, spelunking condo buyer expectations for today's New York Times:

“As the old line goes, once you’ve been to Paris, it’s hard to go back to the farm,” said Grant McCracken, a cultural anthropologist affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of eight books on consumer culture.

“Once our choice set has been expanded to include things that we never dreamed of that are gloriously better than what we have, it’s very tough for us to be content with the things that used to give us pleasure. And in Manhattan, where people have always had to kind of hold their noses and learn to live with constrained circumstances, I guess this is almost a natural impatience waiting to happen.”

Yeah, I see the Moon, therefore I want it.