Improvement Insights Blog
Don’t Create Fake Data
Use real data, not fake!
“I’m Jay Arthur, author of “Lean Six Sigma Demystified” and QI Macros [software].
“I was at a Quality conference and I attended a presentation by a well-known statistician. He was going to demonstrate some things, but he didn’t have any data. He used Minitab to develop some nice normally distributed random data and then to draw charts with that data. I thought, “Oh my God, what did you just do? You just told everybody in this room they can create fake data! They can create fake data that looks real.” Fake data that looks real. You can do this in Microsoft Excel too. It’ll generate data for you. You don’t have to have Minitab to do that; you don’t have to.
“But I thought about that, and I thought, “Oh my God, we’ve given people a way to create data that looks like good data, but it’s totally fake.” This should worry you. Is the data you’re looking at… did it come from reality, or did it come from a randomized number generator someplace?
“So that’s my Improvement Insight for this week: Don’t make up fake data. Go find real data. Every company is awash in data; you don’t need fake data. Go get the data you have, improve that. Focus, Improve, Sustain, Honor your progress… Rinse and repeat until you retire.
“Let’s go out and improve something this week.”
