Statistics
It’s inevitable that assumptions have to be made when coping with any type of information. Knowledge is often, by it’s very nature, incomplete and imperfect. Regardless, our job is to interpret and extract which means to the very best of our potential.
Nevertheless, there may be at all times a danger that unhealthy assumptions about information will distort the ultimate consequence to such an extent that the result’s deceptive, and even worse, fully meaningless.
I might argue that this will occur to each skilled practitioners, in addition to these new to the sector.
However how does this occur? And what could be accomplished to mitigate it?
Early in my profession I used to be an engineer coping with experimental aerodynamics. That required the processing and interpretation of huge quantities of imperfect experimental information taken from the actual world.
There was a really generally used mantra within the workplace the place I labored (I’ve toned down the actual saying, be happy to insert your individual expletive as applicable):
Assumption is the mom of all **actually unhealthy errors**