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.
Steven LevittRead
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.
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
All quotes →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.
Steven LevittRead
The key to learning is feedback. It is nearly impossible to learn anything without it.
Steven LevittRead
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
Steven LevittRead
Similar quotes
Everyone is trying to jump on the biomimic bandwagon. But a cork floor is not biomimicry. Neither is using bacteria to clean water.
Janine BenyusRead
When results are shared freely amongst the biological community, as has been done for the worm and the Human Genome Projects, specialist scientists can move much more rapidly towards their goals.
John SulstonRead
A lot of scientists hate writing. Most scientists love being in the lab and doing the work and when the work is done, they are finished.
Stephen Jay GouldRead
A scientist is no more a collector and classifier of facts than a historian is a man who complies and classifies a chronology of the dates of great battles and major discoveries.
Peter MedawarRead
The heart of the matter, as I see it, is the stark fact that world poverty is primarily a problem of two million villages, and thus a problem of two thousand million villagers.
E. F. SchumacherRead
Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.
Samuel JohnsonRead