In Epstein's Chapter 13, NUMBERS, the Devil may be in concealed details, or details that aren't readily apparent. Having worked a bit with statistics, I can say that it is easy to accidently mis-lead someone by missing details.
Over the past year, I was trying to understand why there were more calls answered than cases about the calls concerning people who move within San Jose. There should have been about twice as many cases. I thought there was something wrong with the query I was using to get my figures or that the Customer Service group was not entering notes as they should.
In March this year, I was finally able to talk the technical team into changing the names for the notes to make them more descriptive. To my surprize, this seems to have fixed the problem. Now, we have about twice as many notes having to do with moving than we have calls. It turns out that notes were being entered, but they were in the wrong categories - so they didn't come up when I searched for moving statistics. Duh!
With statistics, you have to be sure you're measuring what you think you are.
Wow! This critical thinking is sure getting us to be very good investigators of the truth! :o)
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you took the time to research this problem. You noticed that something wasn't adding up and you took the initiative to search further. You are very smart to do this! Life is very hard sometimes. Everything should be easy or simple. Why do people make everything so complex by not telling or showing the truth. Except in your situation, the truth was there, but it was hidden in the wrong category. Whoever set up your system should have known better or should have had enough meetings to know what was needed before setting it up improperly. But good thing you caught it. Now your assessment can be correct. Good job!