Data Dump

By: Stirling Kelso, Joseph Manez, and Jennifer PollockThu Sep 11, 2008 at 6:08 PM

The number of people paid to produce data keeps going up (we think). So why is it so hard to find numbers that actually mean anything?

Are we losing our statistical grip? Are we no longer able to keep track of ourselves--and to predict with some certainty where we're all headed?

Which is why there's a robust trade in supplying current, relevant statistics and forecasts for, well, money. "Do you have projected data for the number of surveillance cameras in the United States?" we asked Joe Freeman of J.P. Freeman, a security-industry researcher. "Do you have $5,000?" he snapped. At joints like Forrester, ACNielsen, and Mintel Group, among many, many others, complexity, change, and general confusion are all positive business indicators.

But we can't buy our way out of this. 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. That sort of resiliency is healthy, in any case.

Failing that, of course, there's a simpler solution to the statistics jam. We were clued in by an official at the United Nations Statistics Division when we sought a certain piece of agricultural data. After a pause, she asked: "Have you tried Google?"

Yeah, once or twice.

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