Dumb Ag Guy

Today i just finished a tough meeting with my staff and the staff of a survey organization that we contracted almost 8 months ago to do a survey. It has become a blame game and just about every issue we have with them is (apparently) either our fault or the fault of the people they surveyed. It was tough in that it was the hifalutin academic statistics gurus vs the "country bumpkin" field people (who just happen to work in the field and know that the data that was presented does not reflect observations in the field). They ran circles around us with all their numbers and procedures etc but in the end, the data just does not reflect what we see in the field... its kind of like we are race car drivers and we can just feel that something is wrong with the car but we can't say exactly what is wrong while we have the mechanics telling us everything is ok. At one point they told us the "numbers don't lie" which immediately brought to mind a quote from Mark Twain "There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics"... i am not sure they would have seen the humor in that quote though.