I know we have been talking about statistics a lot in my last few articles, but recent reader comments have prompted me to think more about why doing statistics properly matters. Come with me, dear reader, on a journey to find out why you should embrace, and not run screaming from, your inner statistical geek. But to get there, we have some interesting terrain to cover… starting with the human brain.

All right, I want to build a convincing case, step by step, so let’s get some basics out of the way.

Reality: it’s… complicated

Reality is messy, especially that part of reality we call business. We often have to make very important decisions when we have inadequate information and in the presence of noise that further confounds our ability to perceive the truth (or its reasonable approximation).

If that is what we are stuck with, we have one of two choices: abandon data and go on “gut feel,” or try to extract information from that data.

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