Nevin's Data "Points"

When you see a headline that confirms your sense of the world, you’re naturally predisposed to embrace, remember (and these days “share”) it as a validation of what you already perceive reality to be. Indeed, as human beings, we’re drawn to perspectives, surveys, and studies that validate our sense of the world. This “confirmation bias,” as it’s called, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms our preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. It also tends to make us discount or dismiss findings that run afoul of our existing beliefs—even if the grounds supporting that premise are shaky, sketchy, or (shudder) downright scurrilous. Here are some things to look for—likely in the fine print or footnotes—as you evaluate those findings. There can be a difference between what people say they will (or might) do and what they actually will. No matter how well targeted they are, surveys (and studies that incorporate the outcome ...

A mainstay of multiple-choice test instruction is the admonition to select the “single best answer.” Now, generally there really is only one valid answer, but there are times when the questions posed are sufficiently imprecise, or the potential answers specific, that more than one response is viable. That’s where the test architect can always fall back on their notion of “best” answer– because, even if a credible argument can be made for an alternative, it’s a lot easier to grade when there’s only a single, pre-determined result. When it comes to projecting possible outcomes in situations where there might be hundreds, perhaps thousands, or even millions of different results, it’s not uncommon to pick a single point to focus on. For example, projections in financial analysis might use the most likely rate of claim, the most likely investment return, or the most likely rate of inflation, whereas projections in engineering analysis might use both the most likely rate and the most cri...