The dogs that don't bark in the night

Rory Sutherland

Lack of variation in data can be indicative of a trend or problem in of itself, and so shouldn’t be ignored.

Data and statistics will always be open to interpretation, writes Rory Sutherland.

Many years ago, back when fax machines were a thing, a friend of mine had been called in to evaluate the effectiveness of a luxury car-maker's much- acclaimed recent advertising campaign.

He waited in a London meeting room for the latest sales figures to be sent from the UK head office. The fax machine rang a couple of times, whistled a bit then started to churn out the latest sales graph.

"I think it's broken," his companion said. "It seems to have got stuck." But there was nothing...

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