This month I want to highlight an article by Forrest Smith, My Favorite Paradox. In this article, Forrest discusses how cursory data evaluation can easily lead to incorrect conclusions. As products begin to gather customer data and use that data to make decisions on behalf of the customer, this article is a good reminder of how to carefully approach this problem space.

https://www.forrestthewoods.com/blog/my_favorite_paradox

“In 1973 the University of California, Berkley was sued for bias against women applicants to their graduate programs. Men were favored to women by 44% to 35%. The lawsuit triggered a study. The study results showed that not only were women not discriminated against, but that women had a statistically significant advantage! How is that possible? The data seemed clear. The answer is Simpson’s Paradox: Trends which appear in groups of data may disappear or reverse when the groups are combined.”