Sharks, Dogs and Biases
Tens of millions of people suffer from dog bites each year globally, compared to just 50–80 shark bites. As a data professional, I am expected to interpret data and provide stakeholders with insights in the form of a story. Many refer to this skill as "critical thinking." While that is valuable, one must also question how they arrived at their conclusions in the first place. According to Wikipedia, a bias is a disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is inaccurate, closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. I gained a deeper understanding of biases during an Organizational Behavior course I took in university, and I briefly mentioned it in Blog Post #8, which discusses data-driven decision-making. Beyond numbers in a database, biases can lead to poor decisions in the real world. For example, it is statistically more likely to be bitten by a dog than by a shark; however, availability bias caused authorities in Tobago to place a bounty ...