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Unless you happen to possess luck on a superhuman scale, bad data will lead to bad decisions. Alas, the situation is not symmetrical: good data may or may not lead to good decisions. Good data can be corrupted in context — by the misinterpreter, by the inattentive, by the intrusion of luck of the bleakest kind. The publishing business operates with data that no self-respecting industry would tolerate (can you imagine an executive at Exxon Mobil not knowing how many cars are on the road, how many miles they drive, and how much gasoline they consume?), and within publishing, book publishers have the worst of it, with no hard evidence about who actually purchases and uses their products, assuming they are purchased and used and not simply accessed on a pirate site somewhere or, in their print form, simply serving to dress up a furniture store.
