First - I am sad to hear of the events of this week, and at the same time I feel like I had excellent timing in my own departure. Second - I appreciate that you make something as serious as the Boeing situation with doors blowing off planes hilariously funny to read about. Third - only you could figure out a way to weave major current event headlines (Boeing's shitshow, Kahneman's passing and What Went down on Wednesday) into a thought provoking and truly engaging read for this week. Whatever you find yourself doing in the coming weeks (spending quality time with family, pursuing other interests and exploring options), I hope this substack remains a constant. I feel incredibly privileged to have worked with you, albeit only briefly and in an at best tangential manner, and I will continue to be an avid fan of Benn.substack, as I have been a loyal subscriber for well over a year and get truly excited every Friday to read this.
There are echos of this same principle in one of Matt Levine’s posts this week about meme stocks.
“With time, I have become more comfortable with the answer to "what are we all doing here?" The answer is "not fundamental analysis." Maybe it is
"having fun online." Maybe it is "playing a complex game of mass psychology." Maybe it is "using our investments as a form of self-expression, buying stocks and cryptocurrencies we identify with and feeling better about ourselves if they go up." The third era is new, and we do not understand the mechanisms here as well as we understand discounted cash flow analysis, but maybe there are mechanisms to discover; maybe in 10 years there will be textbooks on Meme Stock Analysis.”
I love this vision for data analytics. The narrators of the organizational hero's journey. Curators of formal and informal knowledge. Naturalists of bias, heuristic, superstition and dogma. Mappers and mutators of mental, causal models. Tenders of the metric trees.
Drive habits not decisions. Through reflection, discussion, intervention, mediation.
Stop being number crunchers, fact finders and figure suppliers. Sort the narratives, form perspectives, supply stories.
There's a need for this. Always has been. The analytics team is in prime position to take the lead on this.
Here's to hoping it's not just another, more elaborate, scheme.
I made it through thinking fast and slow in… about 6 months. So slow.
Love the water cooler idea. I have never been intentional about collection assumptions like that, but I think it’s a good idea. I should probably even do it with my own ideas from time to time. 😀
I absolutely love the "data analytics is most definitely, 100% NOT a ponzi scheme" walk back when considering returning back to work after taking time off for family stuff.
In regards to the meat of your article, what it sounds like to me is that an analysts best skills could be implemented by: 1. Find and determine the assumptions, pathways, and decision making trees which are currently in operation at a specific organization; 2. Challenge these assumptions / pathways / decision making trees through verifiable data--as stated in the article; 3. Rewrite these assumptions / pathways / decision making trees with new, verifiable data and then implement this new structure through some sort of process, preferably software / code based in order to replicate and codify these implemented and verified decision making 'Algorithms'.
The biggest challenge I can see to that is finding a way to overwrite the CEO's / Vice Presidents / Middle Management's "instincts" for a particular field that they may have been for 30-40 or more years, but I think the best solution would for "Step 1"/Automated decision making to have been directly tested and implemented for an organization.
First - I am sad to hear of the events of this week, and at the same time I feel like I had excellent timing in my own departure. Second - I appreciate that you make something as serious as the Boeing situation with doors blowing off planes hilariously funny to read about. Third - only you could figure out a way to weave major current event headlines (Boeing's shitshow, Kahneman's passing and What Went down on Wednesday) into a thought provoking and truly engaging read for this week. Whatever you find yourself doing in the coming weeks (spending quality time with family, pursuing other interests and exploring options), I hope this substack remains a constant. I feel incredibly privileged to have worked with you, albeit only briefly and in an at best tangential manner, and I will continue to be an avid fan of Benn.substack, as I have been a loyal subscriber for well over a year and get truly excited every Friday to read this.
There are echos of this same principle in one of Matt Levine’s posts this week about meme stocks.
“With time, I have become more comfortable with the answer to "what are we all doing here?" The answer is "not fundamental analysis." Maybe it is
"having fun online." Maybe it is "playing a complex game of mass psychology." Maybe it is "using our investments as a form of self-expression, buying stocks and cryptocurrencies we identify with and feeling better about ourselves if they go up." The third era is new, and we do not understand the mechanisms here as well as we understand discounted cash flow analysis, but maybe there are mechanisms to discover; maybe in 10 years there will be textbooks on Meme Stock Analysis.”
I love this vision for data analytics. The narrators of the organizational hero's journey. Curators of formal and informal knowledge. Naturalists of bias, heuristic, superstition and dogma. Mappers and mutators of mental, causal models. Tenders of the metric trees.
Drive habits not decisions. Through reflection, discussion, intervention, mediation.
Stop being number crunchers, fact finders and figure suppliers. Sort the narratives, form perspectives, supply stories.
There's a need for this. Always has been. The analytics team is in prime position to take the lead on this.
Here's to hoping it's not just another, more elaborate, scheme.
Enjoy your well deserved time off & hope to see you soon back in action!
I made it through thinking fast and slow in… about 6 months. So slow.
Love the water cooler idea. I have never been intentional about collection assumptions like that, but I think it’s a good idea. I should probably even do it with my own ideas from time to time. 😀
Hi Benn,
I absolutely love the "data analytics is most definitely, 100% NOT a ponzi scheme" walk back when considering returning back to work after taking time off for family stuff.
In regards to the meat of your article, what it sounds like to me is that an analysts best skills could be implemented by: 1. Find and determine the assumptions, pathways, and decision making trees which are currently in operation at a specific organization; 2. Challenge these assumptions / pathways / decision making trees through verifiable data--as stated in the article; 3. Rewrite these assumptions / pathways / decision making trees with new, verifiable data and then implement this new structure through some sort of process, preferably software / code based in order to replicate and codify these implemented and verified decision making 'Algorithms'.
The biggest challenge I can see to that is finding a way to overwrite the CEO's / Vice Presidents / Middle Management's "instincts" for a particular field that they may have been for 30-40 or more years, but I think the best solution would for "Step 1"/Automated decision making to have been directly tested and implemented for an organization.