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Go out and collect data and, instead of having the answer, just look at the data and see if the data tells you anything. When we're allowed to do this with companies, it's almost magical.
Steven Levitt
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Collecting data and analyzing it reveals insights rather than just providing answers.

In this quote, Steven Levitt emphasizes the power of data analysis over simply seeking predefined answers. By encouraging a data-driven approach, he suggests that the information itself may lead to unexpected insights and revelations, highlighting the transformative and often surprising nature of thorough data exploration, especially in a business context.

Themes

DataAnalysisInsightsBusinessInformation

In practice

Example use cases

In a business presentation about the importance of data-driven decision-making.

More from Steven Levitt

Data, I think, is one of the most powerful mechanisms for telling stories. I take a huge pile of data and I try to get it to tell stories.
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If you own a gun and have a swimming pool in the yard, the swimming pool is almost 100 times more likely to kill a child than the gun is.
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The key to learning is feedback. It is nearly impossible to learn anything without it.
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And knowing what happens on average is a good place to start. By so doing, we insulate ourselves from the tendency to build our thinking - our daily decisions, our laws, our governance - on exceptions and anomalies rather than on reality
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