Tom: Re MU shares outstanding
Three comments:
1) While your points are valid (as usual), they are unfair - in this battle of wits, you repeatedly fire on the unarmed!
2) If and when I make my own next bonehead statement, I sure hope it pulls an Exocet and stays below your radar. If not, a private communication would be really appreciated - this public defrocking thing has very little appeal.
3) Seriously, while not serving as an apologist for those that you skewer, I believe that there is some merit in recognizing that a market that demands a rush to judgment often gets exactly the analysis it deserves. The sloppy errors that you identify are egregious and glaring, but the fact that they are so easy to spot tends to minimize their damage (or at least creates substantial opportunity for those willing to take the time and effort to avoid assuming everything they read as gospel just because it's on a letterhead).
In my own work, I try to emulate $40 Boyd. Colonel John Boyd was an instructor at Nellis AFB (the Air Force equivalent of the Navy's Top Gun program at Miramar) who had a standing offer to pay $40 to any pilot that could beat him in a dogfight - and I understand he never had to pay off. He broke down the fighter pilot's function into what he called the OODA loop - Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action (this approach led Col. Boyd to develop the concept of the heads-up display, since a pilot that needed to look down into the cockpit to get his or her orientation would probably be dead before getting the chance to make a decision or take action).
In my line of work, I view it as NOR - News, Orientation, Recommendation. The factual aspect of our process is the data that is necessary to provide the base of our orientation. You're absolutely right in believing that errors made at that level call the recommendation into question. Of course, getting the factual part right hardly guarantees a correct recommendation, but at least there's a shot at it that isn't entirely driven by chance. And then we have to contend with LaFountain's Law - "Data can be accurate or timely, but seldom both and occasionally neither."
So reload, but please don't point that thing at me! - Tad LaFountain |
