What have you learned about humanity through working in BI/data related work?

No one understands error rate.

They can all tell you it means X% error but no one 'gets it'. You always have people who want to eliminate error and freak out when a normal amount of error occurs in something important as if it meant a group didn't take it seriously, or people who pile up reports of errors, which over time are not remarkable, but then act like the pile means someone is "error prone".

Only data people and safety people get this and so I empathize with safety people who get reputations as sticklers for rules and being authoritarians because I know they have to herd cats who can read the rules back to them and say the right things on queue but they don't 'get it' that it could be them screwing up and killing themselves or someone else. They'll walk away and ignore any safety measure that is uncomfortable or inconvenient as soon as they feel the slightest excuse or pressure to do so.

Healthcare is wildly unethical.

I know a guy in a position to view crazy amounts of data from the healthcare field. You find absolutely shocking things when you can ask that data questions. For example death rates for the same conditions with similar patient factors that occur inside and outside hospitals generally favor people inside hospitals as more likely to survive. That's not unexpected. However if you divide that data further by a factor that might influence care givers, status as an organ donor for example, suddenly death rates at the hospital are significantly higher based on those factors but there's no significant change outside the hospital.

There were headlines recently that the COVID-19 vaccine made you less likely to die FROM ANYTHING and most people took this in stride, wrapped it in positivity or skepticism and went off to throw it at the other side in their political/social ratio wars on social media, but to me it's like... HOW... and you get those hyper generalized politics-style rationalizations where it's like, sure, maybe millions of people are just "less healthy" across all other factors.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7043e2.htm?s\_cid=mm7043e2\_w
The cohort consisted of 6.4 million COVID-19 vaccinees and 4.6 million unvaccinated persons with similar characteristics as the comparison groups.

https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20211025/people-vacccinated-covid-less-likely-die-any-cause-study

Those who received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine were 34% as likely to die from non-coronavirus causes in the months after vaccination as unvaccinated people. Those who received two doses of the Moderna vaccine were 31% as likely to die as unvaccinated people, and those who received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine were 54% as likely to die.

One explanation could be that people who get vaccinated, in general, tend to be healthier than people who don’t, the researchers said, noting that they plan to study this more in the future.

/r/BusinessIntelligence Thread