Balance Big Data with Human Cognition
March 25, 2014
An example from the world of professional cricket illustrates the dangers of relying too much on data and too little on human intuition. ReadWrite tells us “How Big Data Fails to Make Big Plays in Sports.” Writer Matt Asay describes what went wrong when England’s data-smitten cricket coach lead his team to a striking defeat against Austrailia earlier this year.
The article recounts a strategy based on analysis of data from previous matches, one that left no wiggle room for shifting factors and certainly no tolerance for hunches. The result—a humiliating 5-0 defeat. Asay goes on to extrapolate the lesson to business decisions. He writes:
“Data complements decisions, but shouldn’t rule them, because data is never truly objective. Choosing which data to collect is a human judgment—so, too, are the questions we ask of it. Still, data need not always be subservient to human intuition. At my company, for example, we recently found through extensive A/B testing that our best guesses as to which email subject lines would be most effective were way off. We therefore calibrated our email campaign to match the data, not our intuition. This is where data comes in handy: measuring one’s intuition for accuracy. But it also serves to inform that same intuition, so that our next ‘best guess’ is more likely to succeed. In the case of England’s cricket team, rather than respond to data, coach Flowers was bowled over by it, sticking to data even when it clearly wasn’t paying off in wins. In sport or business, that’s what we call ‘a losing strategy.'”
Technology is great and all, but it is important to remember that it has its limitations. We are still a very long way from building a machine that can compare with the human brain, Watson notwithstanding. Heck, we don’t even fully understand that magnificent apparatus we’re born with. As big data just keeps getting bigger, the adage “trust your instincts” deserves to be reiterated.
Cynthia Murrell, March 25, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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