We all know the maxim – There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics. Well, two recent opinion pieces in the US print edition of the Wall Street Journal brought into focus the politicking related to how we use analytics.
In Tuesday’s copy there was a piece titled, “The Mumbo-Jumbo of ‘Middle-Class Economics‘”. This is a great opinion piece that highlights the different derivations and calculations for the definition of “average incomes” in America. There is political debate going on about this analytic; the “left” suggest that the analytic has been relatively flat for many years – ranging from 1968 to today. The “right” suggest this is not true and they show that average income has risen over this period. So who is correct? Both are of course because each uses a different definition. For the “left”, income is defined as that which excludes all social and welfare benefits whereas the “right” include such data. Additionally the base year on which the analysis is done makes a huge difference too, since the value of the $ changes over time, and inflation has a attendance to reduce the real value of money. So in some cases the nominal value shows an increase, but the real value does not. Confused? You won’t be after this week’s episode of Soap! The problem is that politicians use their position and power to “educate” the media and you and me, in order to usurp political capital and influence policy. The result is that politician can’t agree – and that means we have a great argument at the next dinner party.
Taking a more pragmatic view suggests that real incomes must have risen. Families, on average (key point – average) have more TV’s now than ever before, more PC’s, more smart phones, more cars, more fridges than 100 years ago. Probably more than just 50 years ago. This does not mean that there is no inequality or poor segment. It just means that what goes by “lower income” and “poor” and “poverty” has changed over the years.
Only today there was another interesting Opinion piece titled, “The Political Assault on Climate Skeptics“. Climate change is one of the few topics my father and I argued over. Of course I read “An Inconvenient Truth” and I bought the DVD and I was a convert – overnight. Al Gore was emotive, polished, clever, and he made sense. Then my father pointed me to the other articles and books that showed how Gore’s sleight of hand in his use of charts and tables, to present his “hockey stick” were just one interpretation of the data. The fact that there was a choice in how the data was used didn’t occur to me. Then my father asked me to research Al Gore’s financial investments in firms that would benefit from policies promoting the need to reduce carbon emissions. I ended up more confused than ever. Clearly there is more to this story than the prevailing politically correct views suggest.
This article again shows how politics drives the selective use of data and analytics built on them to argue one or other side of a case. It seems there remains ample evidence that human activity has such a small input to the average temperature of the earth. There is some evidence that solar flairs make signification more impact than humans. Then there is data that suggests the earth has experience much hotter, and colder, periods in its history. Then there is the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change. They seem keen to show our impact; but they are even cited in this article with data that suggest data to the contrary. At the end of the day the argument is not conclusive – it depends on what data you want to use, and hence on your political persuasions.
So what is the answer?
One might be standards. When organizations can agree on political-neutral models and frameworks, a standard may emerge. Gartner’s Business Value Model is one such standard. It presents a neutral set of analytics to guide behavior in an organization. This does not eliminate politics, but it may go someway to neutralizing its divisive nature that confuses people so much. In the realm of average income and climate change, we seem a long way off from this idea.
