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The Dow falls, fantasies follow

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The Dow goes down, and everyone asks why? Was it about the Chinese economy? An impending recession? The price of oil? Does anyone really know? Probably not, but that won’t stop people from telling stories that purport to explain — and some that throw fuel on the fire.

Do you find these stories as annoying as I do? Even when I know nothing of the reasons or even many of the facts, I just listen and moan. So often they have as much to do with the real cause as a cave man’s stories did about angry spirits and lightning.

Uber and AirBNB hint at BI’s future

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You may have seen yesterday’s New York Times story about ratings on Uber, AirBNB, and similar outfits. Customers rate providers, but providers also rate customers. And guess what: As coarse as a five-point scale may seem, actual ratings tend to be worse. Forget the shades of gray, you’re probably either terrific or terrible.

Welcome to a chilling thought. This is what a “data driven culture” could be among the late adopters— a warning those of us who worship “data-driven culture” should be careful what we wish for. Is the failure of business intelligence’s failure to penetrate beyond the present beachhead such a bad thing?… Read the rest “Uber and AirBNB hint at BI’s future”

Where data analysis is a nightmare

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There are the dream organizations that deploy data analysts wisely. Then there are the nightmares, such as the I.R.S. as portrayed in David Foster Wallace’s last novel, The Pale King, reviewed yesterday in the New York Times.

… In a universe of veiled and veiling numbers, the task of drawing the true [data] out into the light and holding them up for inspection, clear and remainder-­less, really is a sacred one. … The problem, as I.R.S. recruits soon discover, is that neither moral nor heroic codes hold true anymore.

These recruits work with “excruciating difficulty … in an age of data saturation.”… Read the rest “Where data analysis is a nightmare”