Lies, damned lies and inescapable truths
A story today of best intentioned but made up statistics and some common sense wisdom hidden amongst it all.
One of my favourite statistics is that 92.84% of all statistics are made up. At least!
I am sure you’ve all been to a presentation where someone cites the oft quoted statistic that we only recall 10% of what we hear, 20% of what we read…. and 80% of what we do. I’ve always intrinsically mistrusted this assertion because real research is hardly going to produce such round numbers, so elegantly spaced. Agreeing with the sentiment, I’ve always been content to let the ‘white lie’ passed unchallenged. Not Will Thalheimer! He’s got to the bottom of this well accepted falsehood, tracing it all the way back to on the job training in the oil industry as early as the 1940’s in a detailed blog post.
Despite there being no research to back up these too neat numbers, it is hard to argue that doing is the best form of learning. It’s one of the advantages of hosted software that is less talked about; the ability to try before you buy. It is particularly useful in an area I’m working in at the moment - digital signatures. Let’s face it most people don’t really know what a digital signature is let alone have any experience with how they work in practice.
The company I’m working with, Secured Signing, offer a free personal account that lets you sign up to 3 documents each month. For business there is an evaluation account that gives you the chance to sign 25 documents free of charge and obligation. This is a very practical way to both understand how digital signatures can be used in your work and personal life and to assess the ease of use of a particular digital signature service.
Go on! Give it a go! What have you got to lose…
