FEAR OF NUMBERS

Naturally, most of us don’t like numbers. We are often thrown off-balanced when it comes to numbers. Our statistics lecturer gave us two rules in our first class which he derived from Las Vegas principles. First rule states that what happens here stays here while second rule is no one gets left behind.

Now comes the question; what do you do as a manager?  As a manager, we plan, organize, direct, delegate, strategize, and ensure that our team understand the objectives and goals of our company and institution.

An important responsibility of managers is to take decisions. So, what drives this decision? Data or experience? Some of my classmates went with data and were asked to substantiate why decision-making is driven by data rather than experience. Accordingly, they argued that every manager is supposedly experienced and therefore all that’s needed for decision making is data and not experience. Conversely, we have others who believed that both data and experience are needed and consequently important for sound decision making. They maintained that experience helps to interpret and analyse available data. To be a good manager, one requires data and experience to function effectively and be able to take proactive and excellent decisions.

In providing more input, the lecturer explained that both data and experience are essential to making quality decision. You can have data. But experience will be required to translate such data to meaningful decision. The quality of your decision depends on the quality of data that you have and that’s where your experience set in. For instance, when you are provided with data of different range of temperature readings. To interpret such data and accord what’s high or low, experience will play a role and enable sound decision based on data provided. So, for a manager, there should be a balance of experience and data in decision-making.

When data is processed, it becomes information. As managers, we need the knowledge of data science in our daily activities. Data science simply means how you apply the systematic methodology to derive data and it can be applied in any field.

The good news is that data science is very important in every field. No matter what you studied in school, there is a role for you in data science.  For you to become data analytics, you must have basic knowledge in Mathematics and Statistics. However, most of us basically run away from it, but at the back end of everything we do, is Mathematics and Statistics which is the beginning of wisdom. In a real sense we all need wisdom and we are connected to numbers in one way or the other.

The fear of numbers is the beginning of wisdom… Laugh!

#MMBA3