#4: Data is not always essential to decision making.

Data, while a valuable tool, should in most cases not be the limiting factor in decision making. The cost involve in moving from 90% confidence to 99% generally outweighs the benefit.

Complex systems — the kind that require deliberate and data-driven thinking to make a decision — often allow only that you see correlations in the data; without evoking a change it is impossible to be certain about causation.

Finally, not everything that matters in making a decisions can be reduced the number — the most important being intuition. An expert can see patterns in their systems despite a lack of data to point to. Their judgement matters.

Related: 4a, 8