Management Challenge: P-hacking or "The Danger of Alternative Facts"

Mark Twain famously said "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Maybe if Mark Twain were alive today, he'd add "alternative facts" to that list. BusinessWeek in the article "Lies, Damn Lies, and Financial Statistics" reminds us of the management challenges with statisticians or "data scientists" who manipulate the data to create "pseudo-facts" that can lead to sub-optimal or even dangerously wrong decisions. My University of San Francisco class recently did a hackathon with a local data science company. It was insightful for all involved (and I learned of a new machine learning tool – BigML – which I will discuss in a future blog).