Motivating the military’s move to analytics is the argument that they will make assessments more sound and less subjective . . . because numbers are truth. But, a numerical assessment is at best incomplete, and blind confidence in it can be dangerous. Numbers can be misconstrued, can lack context, and can be, dare we say it, subjective.
Numbers can be misconstrued or misrepresented. There are a million variations of the quote about lies, damn lies, and statistics, or that 90 percent of statistics are made up…
Numbers can lack context. Military training requirements are often described in terms of tasks, conditions, and standards…
Numbers can be subjective. Over my decade plus time as an analyst supporting the military, I’ve seen many attempts by well-meaning staffs to assign numbers to the red-yellow-green stoplight charts the military regular employs…
What can save it, then? First, accepting that blind faith in numbers is risky and unfounded. And then, ensuring that people trained in understanding the merits and challenges of numerical analyses are allowed into the circle of trust and involved in the decisions to employ them. These personnel will dig into the details and look for subjectivity red flags, such as:
Quantitative data are measuring things that cannot be counted or do not have logical units of measure.
Quantitative data are not captured under reasonably consistent conditions.
Quantitative analyses do not come with explicit description of assumptions and other analytic choices.
That was Margaux Hoar, Data Analytics versus Subjective Assessments is a False Choice, over at USNI blog.
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