People in a world of numbers and words

Guest Blogger: Fabiana Pereira, Project Analyst, iPerceptions

I have just started working as an Analyst at iPerceptions and look forward to becoming an active blogger. What is truly exciting about this company is its culture and lifestyle of embracing meaningful discussion and debate. Whether it’s about the latest marketing trends, newest analytical techniques or even new age philosophical questions, the team at iPerceptions is constantly challenging prevailing views and examining issues from many different perspectives. For example, Analyst Michael Whitehouse’s post, The fountain of youth, considers the importance of youth as a factor in better understanding research and the voice of the customer. I would add multiculturalism as another asset of our internal culture that adds to our research expertise. Team members come from across the globe and from varied cultures. One can discover the best Celtic music in the morning, learn Slavic expressions in the afternoon, get valuable travel tips and then dream about visiting South America while driving home.

Why is multiculturalism important? The idea of cultural context is important whenever analyzing human behavior. For instance, a discussion today centered on the relationship between numbers and words, two underpinning concepts of iPerceptions attitudinal analytics.

Let’s start with numbers. Ours come from inferential statistics, which is the art of discovering the dispositions of a wider group of people through the close analysis of a number of direct opinions. I stress the word ‘art’ because although numbers definitely evoke a mystique of truthfulness, they must be carefully mastered through cultural context. Only through a perceptual framework can numbers transform to decision support and efficiently guide business strategy. This is where the intrinsic symbiosis of words and numbers meet: concepts provide the logical background of any statistical analysis.

At iPerceptions, besides hardcore math, many of us have a strong background in the Humanities. We appreciate the nuances of literature, theater, music, and all arts that investigate human beings. It is striking to realize how people do become better professionals by reading a good book over the weekend. Consider Italian philosopher, Domenico de Masi’s ‘ozio creativo’, or ‘creative idleness’.

The edginess of ‘creative idleness’ lies in the combination of ‘art de vivre’ and business efficiency. It makes sense: to understand customers’ needs, marketing professionals need to refine their power to conceptualize, to grasp the complex network of visions, desires, and practical goals that form daily life. Numbers and words are most inseparable and cement together our complex society.