Help Not Wanted – Yet

I appreciate good engineers on my design teams, couldn’t design a building without them. An engineer is by training focused on the minutiae of applied science in a narrow field. If the numbers aren’t right, the result is a structural engineer who designs a floor that bounces or an electrical engineer who can’t add up the panel load and leaves my client blowing circuit breakers. Their disciplines are data driven.

Mechanical engineers have a little more art to add to their science. It’s not just about data measuring the average temperature in the room at the thermostat as 72 degrees, but how is the temperature perceived by people in the room. Perception will depend on activity, attendance, and just plain individual taste. People don’t care about average temperature, but about their temperature. If the temperature next to the window is 50 degrees, the temperature at the inside wall next to the heater is 90 degrees, and the thermostat in the middle measures a nice average 70 degrees – it doesn’t feel like a comfortable room no matter what the average says.

Economists are like mechanical engineers, with a similarly squishy science. The Washington Post ran a headline today “A Recovery Only a Statistician Can Love” (link here). Here’s a quote:


But the same data also explain why any recovery isn’t going to feel like one anytime soon for millions of Americans. Its existence will be confirmed by statistics, but, over at least the next year, the benefits are unlikely to materialize in the form of higher wages or tax receipts or more jobs.

The folks who are feeling the 50 degree temperatures of a lost job or pay cut won’t be comforted by statistics telling them everything is okay. We need to be focusing on the data behind the statistics and less time on the averages.

Sue Lani Madsen