Good for you! Very often analysis is made on incomplete information, either by not asking enough questions or avoiding certain factors out of having an agenda. You are right to see the complexity and wonder if the given data truly represents reality.scrowner said:A piece of paper, with numbers, gets put in front of me and then I start questioning all of the "behind the scene" calculations that went into getting it into this reduced form...I am looking forward to using this knowledge that I have recieved so far in my upcoming classes.
Want to really make your head spin? Try considering such analysis with the whole-system view of Baldrige Quality Award criteria. Then you can get really cynical and suspicious: you can ask questions like "But what would such a result mean to (another department)?" See Baldrige here: http://www.quality.nist.gov/