Legal Research

Data vs the Blink

By Shaunna Mireau

The Technology Review published by MIT offers up some great food for thought via Tweets of article headlines. The publication fills my need for a quick review of what is up with science and technology since I rarely read in this area. Occasionally, there is an excellent business oriented article thrown in the mix.

An article titled Trusting Data, Not Intuition is a worthwhile read. The main point of the article is that for technology related business decisions, nothing beats testing.

Studies of the software industry indicate that when ideas people thought would succeed are evaluated through controlled experiments, less than 50 percent actually work out.
…
What’s important, Kohavi says, is to test ideas quickly, allowing resources to go to the projects that are the most helpful.

I am uncertain how well ‘testing’ can be applied outside software development and inside my legal research center.

In my library, we often refer to our Blink. Malcolm Gladwell’s great book about rapid cognition seems to align really well with legal reference work, especially when practiced by a team. A two second decision on which starting point to use first when faced with a reference question seems sensible. Does a quick check with the team, to gauge whether a blink is the right research path, equate to testing as alluded to by the Technolgoy Review article?

Which are you more likely to trust – data or your blink?

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on February 23, 2011 (boomark / email).