Decisions Over Decimals

Preface

What distinguishes a person who makes smart, confident data‐driven decisions? It is not exceptional analytic skills. Instead, successful decision‐makers balance data, experience, and intuition. They quickly sort through information, apply judgment, and are fierce interrogators of data to cultivate sharp insights. They know there is more to decision‐making than just the data. They resist being intoxicated by information. Instead, they apply first‐order principles to understand what the decision really is, why it must be taken, and to what end. They then seek the relevant data to help make that decision. In short, they make informed decisions with incomplete information.

This approach to fast decision‐making taps into a different set of skills, requiring a change in mindset by combining information and intuition. We call this approach Quantitative Intuition (QI)^TM. QI is the product of years of discovery about making effective and efficient decisions. For too long, the debate has been on the value, veracity, and variety of Big Data. This trend has shifted the problem from data exploration to data sifting. This book dives into this emerging method to reimagine making decisions with imperfect information. By sharing a set of rapid response tools to get to the core of any business challenge, QI enables the reader to quickly interrogate and integrate data to make quick, effective, and often bold decisions. QI emphasizes the need to break the allure that an abundance of data ...