Of course, we learned statistics. We went to university, there was a course, there was an exam, we passed it. But we don’t really use it at work… when writing code. We still remember most of it, but what even is there to remember? Average is easy, min, max too. Rolling average? Yeah… I can imagine what it does. And that’s about it.
In IT, we don’t take statistics seriously, but we love proving a point with a good chart.
This would be a harmless, funny quirk, if we were bakers. But we are developers. We write the algorithms that are everywhere now. Suddenly, our code is helping to decide who gets a loan, whose insurance claim gets approved, when the doctor will see you, who gets audited by the tax office, what half a country believes before an election, … .
Software engineers have somehow become some of the most consequential decision-makers in society, and we cope with it by pretending we’re just typing.
So in this series, let’s finally take statistics (and the power we have) seriously.
Our code is everywhere now. Which means… we have a real chance to nudge the world towards better. One feature at a time.
Occasionally, a topic is too broad for a single post, so I split it into a series of related posts.