Batteries, Einstein and Effective Thinking for Researchers
The recent New MR Virtual Festival on presenting data had a number of really useful and interesting presentations. Mike Sherman’s presentation, “Less is More: Getting Value (Not Just Reams of Data) From Your Research” led to an interesting exchange that I think highlights the change in thinking that Market Research must make.
Mike reiterated the point that many have been making…we need to focus our reporting on the key things we learned and not waste executives’ time with a lot of superfluous information. In addition, the report should not just summarize the data, but rather it should synthesize it. He gave an example of a data set with these facts:
- · Jim broke his knee
- · A burglar broke Jim’s car window
- · Jim got a speeding ticket.
A summary of these data might be “Jim’s knee and car window were damaged and he got a speeding ticket”.
A synthesis of that data would be “Jim has been living dangerously”.
Tags: Market Research, misleading statistics, Science, Insights
