Titles??

It occurs to me that only the first time I entered a post was I offered a "Title" prompt. One of the things I like about the one blog I read is the titles. Sometimes they give a hint about what the post will be about and sometimes they are just a line from a song the blogger happens to be listening to at the moment.

In any case, if I had been given a title option (Where there's a Wil...), this post would be called: Data Insecurity.

I wanted to explore how very insecure I am right now about some data I'm compiling for my job. I'm a trained (well, I have a degree anyway) social scientist (Oh, one of those), and I have some skills at analyzing, sorting and drawing conclusions from data at hand.

I just hit that bump where you look at your conclusion and think, "Ha! I *knew* that would be the answer..." and then the vindication fades as you realize that you alone have been handling the data - turning it over, checking the angles, interpreting it...and coming to your own foregone conclusions.

If you are truly interested in TRUTH, perhaps, like me, you suddenly have a moment of trepidation: "Is that the answer, or did I just CREATE that answer...?"

So I've spent approximately 8 hours of my work life with this stuff, and I'm suddenly wondering if maybe I shouldn't put some of the individual data points to a vote. Get together with my team and instead of reviewing my work (as planned), do the work as a group. There is a lot more potential for objectivity there. And potential for conflict. And potential for spinning wheels...

On the other hand, I don't really think that if my conclusion was universally accepted as the word of a God within my company that anyone would go out of their way anytime soon to try to fix the problem. So I'm safe either way. Makes me question why I have bothered to do this work in the first place...no, not really. The answer to that is: There are Problems. Fixing them will make the company better and people's jobs better. Easy answer. I think I'll put this to the team and bow out of any individual responsiblity for the data interpretation.

"Chicken"

"Am NOT!"