Large numbers and probabilities are hard for us to get our heads around. That’s why people often underestimate just how bad their chances are of winning a lottery (e.g. Powerball). The odds of winning Powerball are 1 in 292 million. To put that in perspective… Imagine that you are in the stands in an American …
Read more “Buying a Powerball ticket really doesn’t increase your chances of winning”
The large Powerball jackpot has brought out the “experts” offering advice on how to increase your chances of winning. Unfortunately, many of these experts don’t seem to have taken Statistics 101. Lotteries are random. The only way to increase your chances of winning is to buy more tickets. Here are some of the common misnomers that …
Read more “Know your stats? Watch out for these three Powerball misconceptions”
Happy New Year. Here is the first ever guest-blog in The Question of Leadership. Special thanks to Beth Lowe for this contribution! As an introvert, I can use this! Why you should ignore your mom’s warnings and DO talk to strangers! When I was a kid, the term “stranger danger” hadn’t been coined yet, and …
My annual leadership gift This year, the PNC True Cost of Christmas (the cost of buying all of the items and quantities listed in the Twelve Days of Christmas) rose to $155,407.18 (https://www.pncchristmaspriceindex.com/cpi/#giftprices/byyear). The good news is that, for the most part, effective leadership is still free. So, give the gift that keeps on giving – …
Discussion: Friday, December 18 at 10:00 CST. Why do big changes fail? That question has been answered over and over. Yet, we are still asking it. Many change models focus on the enablement part of change – give people a good reason, the right rewards, and the necessary information, tools and support and they’ll change. …
Are you doing the right things? I’ve noticed a fundamental difference between high level leaders and the rest of us when determining what actions to take. They start with one question: will this work? If the answer is “yes”, they figure out how to make it happen. If the answer is “no”, the move on. …
There is an old saying from the movies, “Never bring a knife to a gun fight”. It turns out, that’s pretty good advice when thinking about data. Using data to defend yourself in a fight probably isn’t going to work. Think about the last time you were on the giving (or receiving) end of a …
This week’s challenge: Format your reports to provide answers, not just numbers. (click on the link for the full challenge). It’s inefficient to have to hunt through rows and columns to figure out what a report is telling you.
This week’s challenge: Define your question BEFORE diving in to your data. (Click the link for the full challenge).
This week’s challenge: Know your metrics (click the link for the full challenge). Don’t trust the name of a metric. Make sure that you understand what it really tells you.