"We torture data"

Digression

When three guys are torturing the hell out of a helpless cop to get information, Nice Guy Eddie enters the scene saying, “If you fucking beat this prick long enough, he'll tell you he started the goddamn Chicago fire, now that don't necessarily make it fucking so! “

--- A scene from Reservoir Dogs

End of Digression

So, when I came to know the tag line of an analytics company, “We torture data”, Nice Guy Eddie’s sensible words flashed into my mind immediately. All those not-so-nice-things pertaining to statistics and statistical analysts also flashed into my mind. The most important and the most relevant of those, I believe is, “Figures don’t lie. Liars figure”. Now, the saying might very well be extended to say that these liars torture data to corroborate their lie.

Having had a peek into the way analytics companies work, and from further information from my friends, I can say that these companies take up almost every project that comes up their way. Even when logical infeasibility looms large, they would like to have a go at it and get the maximum possible information out of the stinking unorganized data available. Such a business is possible only when the project manager tortures his analysts who in turn torture their data. By that rationale, the most straightforward and the sincere-most tagline an analytics company can have is “we torture data”.

Or, for the hidden sadist in every analyst, here is a dialogue originally delivered by Michael Madson in Reservoir Dogs, that can be doctored and adopted.

Mr. Blonde (to the helpless cop, Marvin): Listen kid, I'm not gonna bullshit you, all right? I don't give a good fuck what you know, or don't know, but I'm gonna torture you anyway, regardless. Not to get information. It's amusing, to me, to torture a cop.

One might not get the same level of satisfaction in this case, though. Coz, data do not make a noise when tortured. And, most stories end with the chapter "the torturer gets tortured"