Data at the movies

To the Editor:

The new film “MoneyBall” — based on the book by Michael Lewis, starring Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the general manager of a baseball team who decides to look at data in a new way — says something about data, how we retrieve it, interpret it and act upon it.

Although the film praises data and our reliance upon it for making sound decisions, its unintended consequence is in its praise of those who see with new eyes before they follow the dictates taken from the data. They are referring to baseball, but they may have been talking about education and the data retrieved from standardized tests.

With education consumed with standardized tests and the data they produce, the film reminds us that there is a variety of ways of perceiving, interpreting and gathering such data. The basic premise of the film is that there are unseen or nontraditional data that could be more useful in assessing talent.

The irony that the film touches upon but fails to explore is that those intangible qualities that cannot be subject to data analysis (character, imagination, and intuition) are a primary ingredient of growth and success.

Seeing new data (or old data in a new way) altered the way players were assessed, but it took a person of imagination and intuition to see it that way. Education could use this type of mind-set.

Those who are quick to render judgments on students, teachers, administrators and schools as a result of standardized test scores and the data from such tests need reminding that certain qualities that are less tangible or quantifiable are often more valuable and cannot be assessed by such methods. The data produced from standardized testing gives a limited snapshot of student progress and teacher effectiveness.

Larry Hoffner, LaGuardia HS