13 Leaders Loop skills on data, statistics & analytics. Read each one, then prove it with a short Skill Check to build toward your Leaders Loop Credentials.
A metric is not a thermometer you read, it is a lever your team grabs. Design it badly and people will optimise exactly what you asked for, and nothing you meant.
Picking a chart isn't a styling decision, it's an argument about what the numbers mean. The research on how people read graphs tells you which chart wins, and which one quietly misleads your team.
Any number that moves over time hides three things at once, a direction, a rhythm, and noise. Pull them apart, and a foggy chart becomes a decision you can actually defend.
A single average retention number hides the only thing worth knowing. Split your users into cohorts, watch each curve over time, and the question stops being "how many came back?" and becomes "for whom is this genuinely sticky?"
Regression is the maths behind nearly every "if we change X, what happens to Y?" question you'll ever ask a dashboard. Here's how to read one without being fooled by it.
Before a number can lie to you, it has to be the wrong type. Knowing which of the four kinds of data you're holding is the cheapest mistake-prevention a leader can buy.
A small p-value tells you a result is probably not a fluke. It does not tell you the result matters. Knowing the difference is most of what a leader needs from statistics.
Two numbers that rise and fall together is a pattern worth noticing, and a terrible reason to spend a budget. Here is how to tell the difference, and the one test that settles it.
Four numbers your team will put in front of you, and what each one is really saying before you bet a budget on it.
The average is the most over-trusted number in any business review. Learn to read the shape of your data, and you stop being fooled by a single tidy figure.
Five small numbers do almost all the summarising in business. Knowing what each one hides, not just what it shows, is the difference between reading a dashboard and being led by one.
Three curves explain almost every "how fast is this getting bigger?" question a leader faces, and the human gut reliably misjudges the one that matters most.
Before a chart can tell you anything true, four quiet decisions have already been made about the data behind it. Most bad calls trace back to one of them going wrong unnoticed.
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