The Data Never Lies: Don’t Pull a Tyson; Take the Time to Properly Evaluate Qualitative and Quantitative Elements When Interpreting Data
Earlier this month, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson posted his thoughts regarding the tragic weekend mass shootings on Twitter. I saw this and was immediately struck by his post because of Tyson’s use of and comment on data. In my first article of this series I mentioned that, “…clear and accurate data never tells a false story”. However, how one interprets data determines what true meaning, insight, and perhaps lesson should be taken from the data. Like all data sets, Tyson’s Twitter data report has both a quantitative and qualitative element to each data point. The parameters of this data report are based on average number of deaths in a 48 hour time-frame. It is not clearly stated, but we can assume, based on the context, that these are deaths occurring in the United States. Data analytics 140 characters or less.
The the quantitative (the number of deaths) elements seem to determine the order in which we are meant to consume the data. By ordering of the number of deaths from largest to smallest Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson seems to be suggesting priority. When we read the qualitative aspect of each data point (type of death) Tyson intends for us to learn some new insight. This notion is confirmed by his final sentence giving his interpretation of the data, “Often our emotions respond more to spectacle than data”(1). Tyson appears to be suggesting that the method in which people die during a 48 hour period in the US is not as important as the number of people that die by that method. In his view, the quantitative aspect of the data he has presented outweighs the qualitative. Do you agree?
Before you answer, think about reports you have gone over when trying to segment, interpret, and prioritize data. Is figuring out what is important to you, and the business you represent, always as simple as picking the data point with the highest or lowest quantitative value? Do the qualitative elements impact how you prioritize your data? For example: on a churn report based on customer surveys, is it more disruptive to long term revenue if the company is losing customers because of ongoing competition or because of comments the CEO made about a crucial demographic of customers? With this in mind, I ask again. Do you agree with Tyson’s conclusion based on the data he presented? I for one (actually I’m one out of many based on responses to his tweet) have some issues with this data analysis within a single Twitter post.
Now to his credit, Tyson did post an apology on Facebook to anyone who was offended. He even downplayed his conclusion stating his just trying to start an objective dialogue (1). I don’t believe he needs to feel sorry. He’s a brilliant scientist and objectively speaking, the data is what it is. I just think he’s wrong. Meaning I think he missed something in his interpretation. I think he looked at this data like an astrophysicist and not like a … person. First let’s be clear on the scientific data. There are around 330 million people living in the US. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division estimates that around 7,755 Americans die each day for whatever reason. So in a 48 hour period, that’s 15,510 people who leave this earth one way or another(2). In Tyson’s post the total deaths come to 1,290 people. So on a single day 645 people die due to one of the five causes on Tyson’s list. Out of the 7,755 Americans that pass away every day, only 8.3% die due to one of the reasons Tyson listed. See I can trivialize death with numbers too. Yes Dr. Tyson spectacle does tend to get an emotional response, but any one of these types of death could be a spectacle depending on the circumstances. Sometimes an emotional response is warranted when you are dealing with other human beings.
The reasons on Tyson’s list include: medical errors, car crashes, (unintentional accidents), influenza (a virus), and suicide (tragedies linked to a multitude of causes). Then finally there is “Homicide by Firearm” — MURDER! I am not going into the debate about the means by which these Americans were murdered. I’m going to focus on the fact that murder is wrong and intentional. By definition murder is, “the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another”(3). It’s number five on the Bible’s top 10 list of sins God tells us not to commit. Reasonable, sane people, whether they are atheists or believers, think murder is wrong and preventable. You cannot compare murder to the flu. You cannot compare human error to murder. Even suicide, while terrible, is not criminal like murder. This is a poor data set. This is not comparing apples to apples. If Tyson presented a number of different murder types and compared them to the “Homicide by Firearm”, then that would have made for an interesting debate. Those are comparable data points that could illicit similar calls to action. The quantitative data is not the issue here. Of course more people die in car accidents every day than by murder. With so many millions of drivers of various skill levels on the road in America everyday, there will be car accidents everyday. It is inevitable that a percentage of those accidents incur fatalities. As tragic as fatal car accidents are, we all understand there is some inherent risk to driving. As a society we take all the precautions we can from requiring driver’s licenses to requiring cars be made seat belts and air bags. Most states have car seat requirements for children under age 9, and most states require motor cycle riders to wear helmets. We respond accordingly to the data and try to mitigate the risk.
Millions of Americans do not expect to get murdered randomly while at a festival, or at school, or out shopping, or at a concert, or at the movies. The numbers of those slain in mass shootings are relatively small when compared with other types of death in America. However, I think what Tyson missed when analyzing the data, is that we don’t seem to be responding accordingly to the data on mass shootings to mitigate risk as a society. Random mass murder does make us question the moral underpinning of our society because murder is wrong. When evaluating data we cannot afford to be robotic and default to reacting only to the quantitative aspects of the information. We have to be vigilant, when our data sets represent people, or in this case something that is happening to people.
Reference
- Silverman, Hollie ‘Neil deGrasse Tyson apologizes for his tweets about shooting deaths’, www.cnn.com, accessed 8/9/2019 https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/05/us/neil-degrasse-tyson-gun-death-tweets-trnd/index.html
- United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2019). World Population Prospects 2019, Online Edition. accessed 8/17/2019 https://population.un.org/wpp/Download/Standard/Mortality/
- Oxford English Dictionary, www.lexico.com, accessed 8/17/2019 https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/murder
