No, not the Trevon Martin case but rather the lack of “exploratory data analysis” in business environments.
From Business Intelligence Ain’t Over Until Exploratory Data Analysis Sings, where Wayne Kernochan reviews the rise of statistical analysis in businesses and then says:
And yet there is a glaring gap in this picture – or at least a gap that should be glaring. This gap might be summed up as Alice in Wonderland’s “verdict first, then the trial.” Both the business and the researcher start with their own narrow picture of what the customer or research subject should look like, and the analytics and statistics that accompany such hypotheses are designed to narrow in on a solution rather than expand due to unexpected data. Thus, the business/researcher is likely to miss key customer insights, psychological and otherwise.
Pile on top of this the “not invented here” syndrome characteristic of most enterprises, and the “confirmation bias” that recent research has shown to be prevalent among individuals and organizations, and you have a real analytical problem on your hands. (emphasis added)
I don’t know if I would call it “a real analytical problem” so much as I would call it “business as usual.”
There may be a real coming shortage of people who can turn the crank to make the usual analysis come out the other end.
Can you imagine the shortage of people who possess the analytical skills and initiative to do more than the usual analysis?
The ability to recognize when two or more departments have different vocabularies for the same things is one indicator of possible analytical talent.
What are some others? (Thinking you can also use these to find topic map authors for your business/organization.)