Getting Analytics Right

Chapter 2. Choosing Your Own Adventure in Analytics

Byron Berk

This book is different from other books. You and YOU ALONE are in charge of what happens in this story. There are dangers, choices, adventures, and consequences. YOU must use all of your numerous talents and much of your enormous intelligence. The wrong decision could end in disaster—even death. But, don’t despair. At anytime, YOU can go back and make another choice, alter the path of your story, and change its result.

Excerpt from The Abominable Snowman, by R.A. Montgomery

The quote above is from the first page of The Abominable Snowman, a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book written by R.A. Montgomery. For the uninitiated, after reading a few pages of one of these books, you are confronted with a new dilemma and offered an opportunity to make a decision. With your decision made, you then turn to a new page corresponding to your decision, with an adjusted plot line and consequence. After reading a few more pages of the story, you are prompted for another decision. Continue to read, make decisions, and turn to the corresponding page until you reach a unique conclusion to your reading of the book.

Next to my Rubik’s Cube, “Choose Your Own Adventure” books remain among my fondest memories of my 3rd grade class in 1980. My classmates and I loved the flexibility of the books and the control our decisions exerted over the stories. Just think of the extra reading mileage these books got, with thousands of kids each reading ...