When an Educated Guess Beats Data Analysis
Research on data provided by 122 companies in the advertising, digital, publishing, and software sectors (industries characterized by uncertainty over outcomes) suggests that data driven decision-making could be counter-productive under conditions of uncertainty. Heuristics and gut feelings often offered a better tradeoff in terms of decision-making speed and accuracy; the inclusion of analysis in the decision-making process did not bring about any meaningful improvement in accuracy while significantly reducing speed.