Go Tell New Hampshire.

When I first saw a spreadsheet automatically update, I immediately wondered how businesses had ever been able to test scenarios or assess data without one. Of course, since then number-crunching has grown exponentially, but as New Hampshire Democrats showed the prevalence of data is a double-edged sword.

Twenty-four hour news coverage led to a proliferation of polls that non-statisticians conflated into average findings and interpreted on the fly without paying attention to the large margins of errors that quick data collection must allow. Accordingly Clinton's victory was seemingly a big surprise though not such a big one if you had looked quizically at the soundings and kept in mind the bigger picture and data that had gone before.

Measurement in marketing is increasingly important and rightly so, but perceived preferences can oscillate rapidly, so make sure you understand what you're measuring and how and why it has been measured. It's easy to get more data, it's not so easy to unplace your marketing bets.

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