A Rubric for IT Analysis

Aredridel writes "Zed A. Shaw has an insightful article on how analyses of software systems should be performed, and how they're often done wrong. It should be required reading for all IT journalists, and all readers of IT journals."

Comments

How to Lie with statistics

[alanw]

When you have read that article, go and buy a copy of the 1954 classic How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff, ISBN 0393310728.

Red / Green (Bad graph examples)

[mister_llah]

The usage of red and green determines the meaning, if the higher statistic was red, it wouldn't be the "bad" effect he is stating.

The statement that green is good, red is bad, is not really true. Red is an attention getter, Green is an easy, inobtrusive color (relaxing, generally).

While it is easy enough to make the leap that 'red' is bad because red is often an 'alert' color, the reason red is an alert color is because it is an attention getter, not because it means bad.

Why else do you think so many people drive red sports cars? If red was bad, why wouldn't they drive green ones? ... and the graphs aren't necessarily misleading in the aspect of spacing, the graph seems to be trying to show the ratio of difference, not the difference amount. ... aside from what looks like a bad example of bad examples... there are some good points in the article...