Originally by: Arakasai

---

Edited by: Arakasai on 12/01/2006 17:11:31
Edited by: Arakasai on 12/01/2006 17:10:55
As anyone who has done data management will tell you, getting the data is easy ... making sense of it is more difficult. The battleship numbers are a good example. People immediately jumping to conclusions about what the numbers mean.

Raven at the top, Typhoon at the bottom. Lots of immediate conclusions are made, conclusions that really lack the appropriate data to be made.

I happen to work for an application company and the absolute worst mistake that can be made is allowing your clients to interprete a small snapshot of data. Ultimately, in a community like this one, if you release enough of the data some of the more trained people will develop a logical interpretation of the data.

However, if you do not release a large enough subset of the data, you will get a large number of unrational responses and wild speculation as to what the numbers mean. Without the appropriate data, the more logical people will be unable to curb the wild speculation.

Do the battleship numbers indicate that each person in eve has 1 battleship ... unlikely given my "experiences" within eve. However we lack the data to substantiate it.

Since the Raven is at the top of the list does that mean it is the most powerful Battleship in Eve and others should be balanced against the capabilities of the Raven? Some people have implied that, however I believe it is unlikely given my "experiences" within eve. However we lack the data to substantiate it.

The point of this is to show, that simply dropping some stats into the community is not enough. Careful consideration has to be given about the impact of those statistics and enough data has to be provided to allow a reasonable analysis of the data by those more inclined to do so. In an attempt to curb the trend to jump to unsubstatiated conclusions about what the data means.

---