What do archaeological sites, Nancy Drew, and your workplace have in common? 🔎

My Intro to Statistics professor often shared this quote from Mark Twain:

“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”

I imagine he felt it important to remind us that, in our efforts to share data, we could easily misrepresent the truth. The literature heroine Agatha Christie reminds us of the same, in this wisdom from her character Detective Hercule Poirot:

“How fast you go. You arrive at a conclusion much sooner than I would permit myself to do.”

Unless we’re working in a detective agency that bases its investigations on statistics (dystopian and unoriginal, no thank you), these quotables may not seem relevant to work.

But I venture a guess - a calculated guess - that some of you have been in a workplace that dealt more in evidence and suspects than in facts and fairness. There may not have been a killer in your midst, but at least one of your colleagues was well-practiced at character assassination. Sound familiar?

Workplaces like this are akin to being invited to a murder mystery party, except the party is mandatory, you have 40 hours of work to do while *also* looking for clues, and the only party favour to bring home is anxiety. Who’s in?