Should you trust the data?

Colleagues,

MVP: Data can tell a story, or obscure it.

The data doesn’t lie. Or does it?

Below is an image of the all-time downloads by month for The Assistant Principal Podcast.

Looks like we are headed in the wrong direction, doesn’t it?

But there are several problems with the numbers:

1. Apple made a big change to its downloads policy which dropped the reported download numbers by almost 1/3!
2. At the end of Nov. ‘23, I stopped doing the Five for Friday show and in December went two weeks without an episode.
3. January ’24 is likely the best month we’ve ever had. How is that? We only released two episodes!
4. May looks pretty bleak, except we are only half-way through the month (this snapshot is from May 9th)​​

As I put this post together, I also noticed how months vary between 4 and 5 episodes, which “should” make some months significantly different from others, but if a new episode falls one or two days before a new month, many of that episode’s downloads will bleed into the next month.

Colleagues, in a culture obsessed with numbers, it is worth remembering…

Numbers can tell you what, but not why. And without why, the what may be meaningless.

Today’s intention: What numbers drive your decisions? Should they?

Cheers!

Frederick