The most important idea in statistics

If the politics of your space exploration company elect the YES button as the right one to press under new information… you can do space exploration as Work From Home, lounging in your pajamas while pressing YES, YES, YES, YES, YES for all the planets!Moreover, staying on your couch is the right thing to do.

Going to the planet just so you can make some complicated calculations is a waste of time and fuel.

The decision-makers have chosen this decision framework and in it, pressing YES is the right answer.

Don’t whine and try to go with the other default action so you have an excuse to use a fancy formula — this isn’t college.

We don’t calculate things for the sake of calculating things.

We only make statistical calculations to see what the data say about switching actions.

(Guess what, sometimes we can see the answer, so we don’t even need to calculate anything.

)If you don’t like how your leaders picked the default action and decision context, you’d better apply for their jobs so you can call those shots one day.

As long as you’re a mere data scientist (or astronaut), your job is to do right by the context your leaders create for you.

The skills of your decision-makers make or break all statistical endeavors.

Elect them wisely.

Your default action determines the whole analysis.

Please, don’t try to start from the hypothesis and work backwards to the default action that lets you use the math you like.

If you have no preferred default action, you don’t even need statistical inference.

Read this instead.

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