Business: The Land of 10,000 Assumptions

Nathan Rupert “Confused or Disgusted?” September 11, 2015 via Flickr; 

Creative Commons 2.0 Generic

Telling people that I’m a data scientist is kinda fun. At the time of this writing, it’s still a relatively new job title, and it’s not one that most people understand. Once I reassure people enough get past the confused stares, I usually move into this “parable:"

Every business is a collection of approximately 10,000 assumptions. Said assumptions represent the Highest Paid Person’s Opinions (HPPOs) of said company’s leadership. Most of the assumptions are correct, or the company would go out of business. In most companies, It’s probably safe to assume that 5-10% of those 10,000 assumptions are wrong, it’s just that nobody in the business is sure how to tell the right assumptions apart from the wrong ones.

In the future, I firmly believe that the companies that most aggressively, (and efficiently) hunt down, identify, and fix the wrong assumptions will have a distinct competitive advantage over the companies that don’t. 

How do you discern which assumptions are right? You use the scientific method. You ask questions about your customers, you look at your company’s data to find the answers, and the answers almost always lead you to better questions. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s data-driven science, that usually gets shortened to Data Science.

That’s what I do.