Trumblog

After lunch, if the day is nice, we sometimes take a walk along the Charles behind our office to enjoy the fresh air, look at the turtles and if we are lucky see a heron and talk.  Today along the path there was a 3×5 card that said Audacious with the definition on the back.  A little further was another card with Anomaly on one side and with the meaning on the other.  Finally there was one that was definition side up, which we puzzled over and turned out to be Arduous. It got us talking about what was going on.

“Someone’s not going to do well on their spelling test,” Sheena sighed.

“A dedicated teacher wrote those out for a student who needed the extra help and they’re just throwing them away,” Donna complained.

“That student is going to do really well since they’re throwing away the cards as they get the answers right,” I said.

Three very different ways of looking at the same information leading to three very different conclusions.  Why Sheena was negative, Donna sure that someone’s effort was squandered and me so positive I don’t know (especially me considering my issues with spelling). But we all see events through the lens of past experience.

Whether it’s cards on the walk, news, consumer research or website usage data, we all interpret the evidence that we receive through the lens of experience. The ability to strip it from our insight into the meaning of the data that we receive is necessary, but at the same time the experience that we bring to the table is usually why we are seated there in the first place. We are asked to walk the fine line between an open mind to the meaning of information and the knowledge that comes from having been in similar situations before.  Not always an easy task. How do you bring these two opposing forces together for insight?

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