The Finding That Was Just Your Own Definition
This article gives you the self-audit that catches the most embarrassing class of mistake in analysis, the one where every number is computed correctly and the finding is still worthless. The test is one question: could this result have come out any other way, given how I defined things? If the answer is no, it is not a finding. It is your own filter, wearing a chart. It nearly happened in the…
When presenting any striking result, ask whether your own definitions guaranteed it. Circular findings appear cleaner than real ones because they come out without opposition. Clean results with 0% or 100% are the tell: nothing fights them in reality. The near-miss occurred when the build excluded games priced above $20 from being flagged as hidden, despite the definition of hidden including price under $20.
The chart would have shown zero hidden games in the $20+ band due to this price ceiling. This error is dangerous because circular results look more impressive than actual findings. Clean results are not a sign of a strong finding; they merely indicate that nothing was fighting the definition. The audit test consists of one sentence: present the finding and its definitions, then listen for overlap.
If the finding's criteria appear inside the definition, it is circular. The four places circularity can hide are: cutting on a column inside your own filter, filtering on the outcome then measuring the outcome, survivorship bias, and setting a threshold that you later discover. When you catch circularity, drop the chart and keep the note of the audit. This rare skill in the field differentiates producing numbers from producing analysis.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
