More of Us Can and Should Use Data

Many large businesses and organizations use large data and statistics for the purpose of aiding them to make good decisions that they could not have made otherwise. However, this is rarely done is smaller settings. My call for change is this: because of the tools that we have today, smaller organizations should be able to reap the benefits of data and statistics, even if their skills are limited. Small organizations that adopt the use of statistics in their decisions, in addition to other commonly used methods, will be able to accomplish much more than they would otherwise be able to.

The topic that I have chosen was slightly different than the original one I had. With my background in statistics, I wanted to talk about using big data (like large data from Facebook, etc.) to help ourselves understand human behavior better, as well as talking about how to deal with privacy issues. I thought that there was some magical paradigm shift that we needed to take on privacy. But as I talked to others about my topic, I realized that most people didn't care if data about themselves was used, just as long as it was anonymous and that there was no security threat to them. I realized that any call for change I would have made would have been more about the technicalities of expanding our knowledge by using data, while taking steps to appropriately respect our privacy. If I did that, I would be giving a boring, technical presentation, that not even I would really enjoy. And there wouldn't really be much of a historical perspective to it.

But I didn't want to give up in using my major to think of some call for change. I decided to shift from big data to simple statistics. As I thought about it more, I realized that many of us don't take advantage of the small data we have around us to make logical decisions. The way of thinking from the Enlightenment has allowed us to be more reasonable about making decisions, but many times we fail to look at the numbers that would point us in the right direction. Sometimes we don't take advantage of the advances in technology we have that can allow more of us without a strong statistical background to easily analyze data.

Another problem is that the results from data are not shared or communicated. This is where most of the benefit should come. For example, there have been many times where a classmate has asked me to take a survey and then never share the results from me. Sometimes I think I could have learned a lot if that person would have taken the time to communicate his or her results to the people who took the survey. This is just one example of how we fail to communicate the things we learn through data. In addition to using the data around us, if we make sharing our results a priority when doing data analysis, more people will be able to make better informed decisions.

Update:

After looking at the comments, I think one thing that I could have focused more on is the use of data and statistics in communication. Another big technology that we have been given today is data visualization. If we were to take the power of that in our communication, I think more of us would be able to benefit from data that is unbiased yet more easy to understand. The classroom example in the presentation I used is evident of the usefulness of visual information in quickly communicating an idea. As the common saying goes, pictures speak louder than words.