Data Core · Performance Analysis · Module
Reading the result
What the finding does and does not say, including the alternative explanations — the step where confidence is either calibrated or inflated.
The idea
How it works
The most common failure is not a wrong calculation but an over-confident reading. A correlation is presented, a mechanism is imagined, and the mechanism becomes the finding.
Caveats present in the analysis routinely disappear in the summary, and the summary is what people act on. Keeping them in the first paragraph is the only reliable defence.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
List the alternative explanations
Three, before concluding. If none can be excluded, the finding is a hypothesis.
- 02
Report effect size, not just direction
A real effect too small to matter is a common and expensive finding to act on.
- 03
Keep the caveat in the summary
A limitation on page four is a limitation nobody reads.
- 04
State your confidence
Explicitly, so the reader can weight it rather than assuming certainty.
One level in
The components of reading the result
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
A caveat on page four is a caveat nobody reads. Put it in the first paragraph or accept it will be lost.
The other modules in performance analysis
The question
What decision the analysis is meant to inform, and what answer would change it.
LearnMethod
How the question will be answered, and whether that method can actually answer it — because most business questions are causal and most available methods are not.
LearnActing on it
What changed as a result, and whether the change worked — without which the analysis was a document rather than an input.
Learn