Three Fast Company journalists set out to fill 5 pages with “illuminating” statistics on the current state of a number of areas – demographics, tech, health, etc. What they came up with instead was an essay titled Data Dump featuring a rather dark conclusion: “[T]he state of statistics is dreadful.”

Their findings:

(1) Timely raw data on lots of stuff is still tough to find
(2) Not enough resources — money plus statistician talent — to track [both accurately and timely] a world which is growing more complex and changing faster than ever
(3) More analysts getting gun-shy about making predictions (hard to blame them — it’s getting easier to be wrong in a constantly changing world)
(4) The democratization of research — a combination of (a) a growing pool of data available online and (b) tools [like Google] with which to find it — makes for lots of amateur statisticians

Point #4 is mostly a good thing (in comparison to the pre-Google world), but the authors contend that most of us are unconsciously incompetent:

The problem is, few of us bring any real expertise to [data collection & analysis]. We used to rely on a few researchers, statisticians, and analysts with particular field expertise to know what questions to ask and where to look. Now we’re on our own. And we’re overwhelmed.

Although I consider myself a recovering statistician I still do some statistical analysis consulting from time to time. As much as I’d like to claim otherwise, my recent observations compel me to concur with the authors on all counts (pun intended). I believe that the world is moving into a new age of numbers and we’re still figuring out how to make sense of it all. I could argue that these three young journalists should have employed the assistance of a qualified statistician or two. Unfortunately, not many folks have ready access to a statistician (let alone know where to locate one), and even with a stats guru on hand, one can still hit a wall with Point #1 [above].

The journalists end the article with some advice (which I endorse):

If we’re condemned to ever-increasing statistical fuzziness, individuals and businesses alike must become a lot more flexible about the way we consider the future. Rather than mapping strategy around a relatively certain future, we have to be able to accommodate a range of possible outcomes.