{"id":1801,"date":"2013-06-27T11:53:45","date_gmt":"2013-06-27T15:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/?p=1801"},"modified":"2013-06-27T11:53:45","modified_gmt":"2013-06-27T15:53:45","slug":"data-and-opinions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2013\/06\/27\/data-and-opinions\/","title":{"rendered":"Data and Opinions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I give a lot of talks to our students touting the value of data in business decisions. \u00a0The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tepper.cmu.edu\">Tepper School<\/a> prides itself on its analytical approach to business, and data is at the heart of this approach. \u00a0Of course, what you\u00a0<em>do<\/em> with the data is also pretty important, which brings in statistics and operations research.<\/p>\n<p>For years, I have used the following quote in my talks:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Without data, you&#8217;re just another person with an opinion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That quote works (I sometimes substitute a cruder word for &#8220;person&#8221;), but some students continue to think &#8220;OK, so let&#8217;s talk opinions&#8221;, which is not quite what I have in mind. \u00a0So I think I will change this to a great quote from Jim Barksdale, former CEO of Netscape:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If we have data, let\u2019s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let\u2019s go with mine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That does the job!<\/p>\n<p><em>HT: Thanks to <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JohnDCook\">@JohnDCook<\/a> whose tweet reminded me of quote.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I give a lot of talks to our students touting the value of data in business decisions. \u00a0The Tepper School prides itself on its analytical approach to business, and data is at the heart of this approach. \u00a0Of course, what you\u00a0do with the data is also pretty important, which brings in statistics and operations research. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/2013\/06\/27\/data-and-opinions\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Data and Opinions&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-analytics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mat.tepper.cmu.edu\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}