More Judgment Than Data: Data

Literacy and Decision-Making Michael

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More Judgment
Than Data
Data Literacy and
Decision-Making
Michael Jones
More Judgment Than Data
 Michael Jones

More Judgment Than

Data
Data Literacy and Decision-Making
Michael Jones
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-99471-6 ISBN 978-3-030-99472-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99472-3

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For my wife, Courtney, and children Isaac, Miriam, Andrew, and Luke
for helping me to make better decisions.
 Preface

The motivation for this book came from a sabbatical project to develop
a textbook for a new economics course at the University of Cincinnati.
This course would teach students how to analyze the data from programs
like government housing vouchers, wellness initiatives for a company, or
after-school tutoring sessions. In one of my previous courses, I asked
students to conduct a program evaluation on the effectiveness of a tax
incentive program. While the students did an excellent job on the tech-
nical aspects of the evaluation, many of them fell short on the other parts
of the assignment. Students often focused on collecting more and more
data and ignored the dangers from having too much data. The students
did not fully understand that the data was collected so that they might
advise the program’s administrators. They needed data literacy to conduct
a data-centered program evaluation, and I quickly realized that it was a
skill many of them did not possess. Data literacy does not require subject-
matter expertise in a particular area. However, a data-literate individual
does know what data to collect, what questions to ask about the data,
and how to extract meaning from the data.
While many students struggled with data literacy, I observed that a
few of the students did rather well. These were students who came
from non-traditional backgrounds who had studied Biology, English, or
even Philosophy. I noticed that these non-traditional students struggled
initially in the course, but by the end, they were some of the best students.
A student who studied Biology recognizes that the world is a complex

vii
viii PREFACE

system. Biology is full of examples where an intentional and seemingly

good action in one part of the world leads to an unintended consequence
elsewhere. An English major understands the importance of context and
situational awareness. Philosophy students wrestle with some of the most
important questions human beings face. They also receive training in
formal logic that proves to be useful in understanding the ethical conse-
quences of their actions. The success I witnessed from this diversity of
students encouraged me to write a book that would bring the skill of
data literacy to anyone who would take the time to read it.
While I originally wrote this book for my students, I hope that many
others will read it. The skill of data literacy is more important than ever,
and anyone feeling overwhelmed in a world of big data will benefit from
reading this book. Data literacy does not require training in the latest
statistical techniques or working through hundreds of pages of back-
ground reading in a particular subject. This book explains the principles
behind data-literate decisions, and it describes cautionary tales of what
can happen when too much attention is spent on acquiring more data
instead of developing data literacy.

Cincinnati, USA Michael Jones

 Acknowledgments

I want to acknowledge the Department of Economics and the Lindner

College of Business at the University of Cincinnati for approving my
sabbatical. Without an uninterrupted block of time, I would not have
been able to finish this book. I am thankful for all of the students in
my classes who asked questions, challenged my answers, and pushed me
to better explain the subject of economics. I am grateful to the Kautz-
Uible Economics Institute and their support of my efforts to compile the
research in this book. I want to thank Debashis Pal for his encouragement
and for showing me that game theory can sometimes be a more powerful
tool than data analysis. I am also grateful to Dan Kautz and Woody Uible
for their words of wisdom and support. I am especially appreciative for
Sarah Asebrook’s excellent assistance in reviewing my drafts of the book.
I also want to thank the elders at Providence Bible Fellowship in
West Chester, Ohio, where I have the blessing to serve the church as
an elder alongside them. They have taught me how to apply God-given
wisdom in situations where data is often unavailable. I want to thank
the nonprofit organization Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank, where I serve
as a board member, for showing me that using data to make better
decisions can make a difference in the world. I also want to thank my
parents, Randall and Barbara Jones, for demonstrating sound judgment
and wisdom when I was growing up, and my sister, Christy Reed, for her
patience whenever I talked about money and data. Finally, I am thankful
for the grace and kindness that my wife and children have shown me in
writing this book.

ix
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
2 Know Your Limits 17
3 See the Unseen 33
4 Unintended Consequences 47
5 When More Is Better 63
6 Everything Has a Price 83
7 Map the Environment 93
8 Establish a Theory 105
9 Conclusion 119

Appendix A: A Case Study of Data Literacy During

Covid-19 133
Appendix B: Data Literacy Checklist 145
Appendix C: Academic Journal Bibliography 147
Index 157

xi
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Prices for WTI and Brent crude oil 3

Fig. 1.2 OODA loop 8
Fig. 1.3 OODA loop subject to economic constraints 11
Fig. 7.1 Logic model template 95
Fig. 9.1 Fairfield Sentry vs. Dow Jones 123
Fig. A.1 COVID-19 cases in Ohio 139

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Experts often possess more data than judgment.

—Colin Powell, former US Secretary of State

∗ ∗ ∗

What Just Happened?

On Monday, April 20, 2020, something unprecedented happened in the
oil market. The price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil fell to
negative $37 a barrel. Oil prices are historically volatile, but on that day,
oil sellers offered to pay someone else to take possession of their oil. At
first glance, a negative oil price seems impossible, but an understanding
of how oil prices are generated provides insight into what happened that
fateful day.
Political and business leaders incorporate forecasts of oil prices when
making important decisions. Airlines purchase oil in advance to reduce
their exposure to daily oil price fluctuations. Political leaders consider oil
prices when deciding whether to open up federal lands for oil and gas
exploration or to approve the construction of an oil pipeline. Leaders
who make these data-driven decisions must possess an understanding of
the environment and incentives that produce the data. These leaders must
resist the cry to simply generate more data before making a decision. Even

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
M. Jones, More Judgment Than Data,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99472-3_1
2 M. JONES

if they analyzed every historical data point, there were no negative oil
prices in the past. Participants in the oil market in 2020 did not need more
pricing data to make a good decision; instead, they needed different data,
more judgment, and an understanding of the data-generating process.
Several factors played a role that led to a price of negative $37 for
a barrel of oil. When economists describe and analyze the price of oil,
the mundane language glosses over more nuanced details. There is not
a single, global price for oil. Oil is produced, refined, and distributed
in countries all over the world. Prices reflect the location of the oil, the
ease with which the crude oil can be refined, the cost of transportation,
and many other factors unique to a particular time and place. Figure 1.1
shows two of the most common types of oil available in the market: West
Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent crude. West Texas Intermediate is
usually extracted from oil fields located in the Permian Basin in the south-
western United States. The extracted oil is then transported to Cushing,
Oklahoma, a major oil pipeline hub in the United States. Brent crude is
typically extracted from the North Sea in Europe, where large oil tankers
can take delivery of the oil.
Crude oil must be refined before consumers can fill up their cars at
the gas station. WTI has a slightly lower sulfur content, which makes
it easier to refine. Oil that has a lower sulfur content is considered to
be sweeter, and refineries are willing to pay a higher price for it in the
market. Transportation costs, market competition, and government regu-
lations also contribute to the price of a particular type of oil. Because
of their similar characteristics, WTI and Brent crude are considered by
economists to be close substitutes for one another. Practically, this means
that refineries are not forced to buy one type of oil since a refinery’s tech-
nology can accommodate both types of oil. If a crude oil seller attempts
to charge an excessively high price for one type of oil, refineries can switch
to the other type. As a consequence, the prices of these two types of oil
move in near lockstep, although there are slight differences in the price
levels. Why then did WTI fall to negative $37 on April 20, 2020, while
Brent crude maintained a positive price point of $17?
When a buyer and seller agree on a price for WTI crude oil, the seller
agrees to deliver 1,000 barrels of oil on a particular day in a particular
location in the following month.1 In the case of WTI crude oil, the buyer
must actually take delivery of 1,000 barrels of oil in Cushing, Oklahoma
from the seller. Buyers and sellers can also agree on oil delivery that will
take place many months in the future—not just in the next month. An
oil buyer might want to take delivery of the oil in three, six, or even
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

80

60

40
Dollars per Barrel

20

-20

-40
2019-01 2019-04 2019-07 2019-10 2020-01 2020-04 2020-07

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration fred.stlouisfed.org

Fig. 1.1 Prices for WTI and Brent crude oil

twelve months in the future. All of these different time periods will create
different price points for an oil contract. In addition, many buyers never
intend to actually take delivery of the oil. Financial institutions like hedge
funds and pension funds may purchase the oil contract with every inten-
tion to sell the contract at some point in the future and well before the
day that the actual delivery and receipt of the oil must occur.
These important details—combined with the fact that in early March
2020, Saudi Arabia and other countries announced that they would
produce more oil—explain the negative oil price on April 20, 2020. One
of the basic principles of economics is that price is determined by supply
and demand. With the supply of oil increasing in early March and global
demand falling from the effects of COVID-19, the price of oil would
inevitably fall. Whenever the price of oil to-be-delivered in the near future
falls below the price of oil to-be-delivered in the distant future, a situation
called contango occurs. During this particular contango, traders could buy
April oil for $30 and turn around and sell December oil at $35 a barrel.
An astute trader could exploit the market opportunity that exists in the
price difference between the two contracts and earn a profit of $5 on
each oil barrel. The trader would only need to secure storage for the
4 M. JONES

oil delivered in April during the eight-month window between April and
December.
That is exactly what happened in early March. Oil traders bought up
all of the available storage space in Cushing, Oklahoma as well as access
to storage tanks nearby in places like Houston where oil storage could
be acquired at a reasonable price. On Monday, April 20, there were still
pension funds and hedge funds in possession of a contract that required
them to take physical possession of oil on the following day, Tuesday,
April 21. Because these groups never intended to actually take delivery
of the oil themselves, they were desperate to find someone that would
buy the oil contract from them. Unfortunately, the only places that could
store the oil were located much farther away from Cushing, Oklahoma.
Transporting oil to those storage locations would be time consuming and
expensive, and any buyer would incur significant costs in addition to the
prices charged by the storage locations. Due to all of these expenses, those
pension and hedge funds ended up actually paying someone else $37 a
barrel to take possession of the oil. The market clearing price of negative
$37 reflects the expensive transportation and storage costs for that partic-
ular month’s delivery of WTI oil. No market is immune from the laws
of lower prices due to increased supply and decreased demand. However,
when more Brent crude oil was supplied in the market, oil tanker ships
could dock, store, and transport oil from the North Sea much cheaper
than in land-locked Oklahoma.
Pension and hedge funds leaders that were stuck holding the proverbial
bag would not have made a better decision by having access to more
pricing data and more sophisticated forecasting models. More pricing data
would not have revealed the potential dangers lurking in the oil contracts
market; it might have even exacerbated the situation by providing those
leaders with a false sense of confidence in their market price forecasts.
They needed to ask better questions, seek out different types of data, and
understand the incentives in the environment that generated prices in the
oil market.

Data Literacy
At the end of 2016, IBM estimated that 90% of the data in the world
was produced in the previous two years.2 Despite having access to vast
quantities of data unavailable to previous generations, are people today
really making better decisions? When government and business leaders
make poor decisions, how often do we excuse them because they lacked
sufficient data? The increasing presence of data and computing power in
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

our everyday lives has changed how we make decisions but not neces-
sarily how we learn to make decisions. Schools traditionally teach critical
thinking skills and the associated tools of logical reasoning and deduc-
tion as ways to make decisions. We learn to apply critical thinking when
analyzing texts, speeches, and other forms of communications. But in
a world of big data, we seem to neglect these practices. To make wise
decisions, we need to orient the data and extract meaning from it.
Many employees who work with data believe that they should learn
the latest statistical technique or a new programming language in order to
add value to their company’s data. Universities are increasing the number
of courses offered in data analysis. Companies sponsor hack-a-thons and
release massive datasets on which people all over the world can apply
new algorithms. There is nothing wrong with taking these approaches
in order to make sense of data. In the right situation, they are all part of
the solution. But more data alone is insufficient; it can even be dangerous
and result in bad decisions. Decision-makers need to develop the skill of
data literacy to make good decisions.
A good data-driven decision is more than a purely technical process.
There is an art to using data, and the decision-maker should carefully
understand the environment and incentives behind the data. Data is
not generated in a vacuum. The data-generating process often involves
humans responding to incentives in an uncertain environment. Having
the correct theory about how the world works and the environment
in which the data is generated does not change the data itself, but it
does change how the data is interpreted. The often-quoted adage of the
data speaks for itself rings hollow. Everyone brings their own experiences,
assumptions, and ethics to the interpretation of the data. People who
develop data literacy understand the environment and incentives of the
data-generating process.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) defines literacy as the ability to extract the relevant informa-
tion from texts and understand, use, and reflect on written texts. It is
not just the ability to read text but to read for meaning. I can read
German, French, and Italian newspaper articles because they are written
with the Latin alphabet, but I cannot tell you what they mean. Similarly,
anyone with a basic course in statistics can take a data set and generate
various statistics like the mean and variance, but that does not imply an
understanding of data. Data literacy is the skill to extract meaning from
data.
6 M. JONES

————————————————————————
Data literacy is the skill to extract meaning from data.
————————————————————————

Individuals with access to more data increase their specialization for a

particular task. Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, described
his visit to a pin factory in his book The Wealth of Nations . The factory
had broken down the task of pin production into 18 distinct steps. These
steps included straightening the wire, cutting the wire, grinding the head,
packaging the pins, etc. If each man did everything himself, rather than
specializing in one particular step, Adam Smith estimated that each of the
ten men employed in the factory could produce 20 pins—a total factory
output of 200 pins per day. Smith observed that the factory produced
48,000 pins a day when each man specialized in the production of a
particular task.
There were tremendous benefits to specialization in this eighteenth-
century pin factory; however, the additional benefits from specialization
begin to diminish eventually and may even become negative. Other men
are needed to coordinate the operation of the pin factory. These men
must understand specific processes while keeping the entire operation in
focus. These generalists, or managers, were critical to the efficient oper-
ation of the factory. Investing in too much specialization, at the expense
of investing in resources for coordination and synthesis, could reduce the
productivity of the factory. In a world of big data, we may have swung
too far in the direction of prioritizing data collection and analysis. Instead,
we need to develop more data generalists. These are individuals who can
see the big picture. They know how to break down, orient, analyze, and
reassemble the pieces of data. And they have thoughtfully considered the
consequences of their analysis. In short, they have the skill of data literacy.
They possess judgment to know how much data to collect, and they know
how to use data to make better decisions. This book contains cautionary
tales of what can happen when too much attention is devoted to acquiring
more data while neglecting the skill of data literacy.
Today’s university students face a future in which close to half of all
jobs are at risk of automation.3 To compete in this world, they must
learn how to effectively harness the abundance of data. Companies are
recognizing the value of a non-traditional background for employees who
work with big data. At a recent workshop on machine learning, I listened
to the CEO of a data analytics firm say that his last three hires were all
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

musicians. He believed that musicians possessed the right combination of

technical and artistic skills along with an incredible work ethic. He recog-
nized that a team of only data analysts would be less successful than a
more balanced, multi-disciplinary team. The tech industry is also reaching
out to hire more students who study or major in humanities.4 As machine
learning and artificial intelligence become more sophisticated and capable
of performing human tasks, companies see the value in hiring people who
have studied, debated, and extensively read about what it means to be
and think like a human. Developing good judgment for tackling data-
centered problems does not preclude anyone from pursuing a particular
field of study, but it does suggest that formal institutions of learning
develop students with the skill of data literacy. Humanities and social
science would be well served to incorporate coding into their classrooms,
and scientific disciplines should not neglect the ethical consequences, or
the human impact, of their innovations and engineering projects. As the
venture capitalist and author Scott Hartley described it, the fuzzy and the
techie, those who are schooled in liberal arts, will rule the digital world.5

The OODA Loop

Data literacy is only one component of the larger decision-making frame-
work. John Boyd was a former Air Force pilot and military strategist who
proposed the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act (OODA) loop as a structure
for framing a fighter pilot’s thought process in battle. In a dogfight, a
pilot relies on his senses and plane instruments to collect data and orient
himself to the environment before deciding how to respond to the enemy.
Boyd was considered by many to be the best fighter pilot of his time, and
his theory of the OODA loop illustrates why he was called 40 seconds
Boyd.6 He claimed that any pilot who completed the cycle of his own
OODA loop faster than his opponent would have a significant advantage
in battle. Boyd would pay $40 to any pilot who could defeat him in a
simulated combat within forty seconds (Fig. 1.2).
The four phases of the OODA loop are: observe, orient, decide, and
act. In the first phase, an individual collects data from the environment.
The United States Air Force requires pilots to have near-perfect vision
because of the importance of capturing the best possible data. Air Force
scientists and engineers extend the capabilities of human vision by devel-
oping new types of sensors and flight instruments. A pilot who possesses
excellent vision, in combination with a sophisticated instrument panel, has
8 M. JONES

Fig. 1.2 OODA loop

a significant advantage in combat. After observing the data, a pilot must

then extract meaning from all of the data by orienting it in the proper
context. The orientation phase is the second step in the OODA loop.
For example, suppose the pilot observes another aircraft violating
restricted airspace. The meaning of this action is different if that aircraft is
an ally versus an enemy. If the aircraft is an ally, then that ally’s pilot likely
made a mistake, and the first pilot would open up a line of communication
to capture more information. If the second aircraft is an enemy though,
then the pilot interprets the data as a hostile action. In this second phase,
the pilot is processing the data as part of the larger environment in which
decisions are made. Pilots who understand the data-generating process
and correctly interpret the data are more likely to make better decisions.
Boyd actually considered the orientation phase as the most important part
of the decision-making process since it “shapes the way we observe, the
way we decide, the way we act.”7
In the third phase, the individual makes a decision based on the avail-
able data and its context. Even with the same data and interpretation,
individuals will inevitably make different decisions. Every individual has
unique preferences, abilities, goals, and tolerance for risk. Consider a
situation in which two pilots both see an enemy aircraft retreat from
a battle, and both pilots correctly interpret that the enemy is setting a
trap to ambush them. One pilot may decide to pursue and engage the
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

enemy while the other pilot returns to base. The first pilot may have a
lower fear of dying, a higher tolerance for risk, or perhaps more advanced
dogfighting skills compared to the second pilot.
Regardless of the reasons for the decision, action will ultimately follow.
In this final phase of the OODA loop, the decision-maker moves from
observation, orientation, and decision toward action in order to affect
change in the world. This book will not say much about this final phase
of the OODA loop since most actions are situation specific. The act of
increasing the speed of the aircraft or climbing to a particular altitude
to chase an enemy is beyond my expertise as an author. If a senator
or governor decides to increase the amount of unemployment benefits
to workers who lost their jobs, the actions needed to pass legislation
depend on the political and legal environment. In a criminal case, once
a defendant and his legal team decide to plead guilty to a crime, the act
of negotiating a plea bargain represents unique circumstances based on
the criminal, the crime, and the predicted response of the prosecuting
attorney.
Readers may be tempted to consider only the third phase of the OODA
loop when determining if the pilot exercised good judgment. However,
good judgment is required in each of the first two phases of the OODA
loop. Aircraft engineers must decide what flight instruments and sensors
to include in the cockpit to give the pilot the best possible data to make
good decisions. While any military, commercial, or recreational plane will
have an altimeter so that the pilot can know the altitude, some flight
instruments are available only in a commercial 747 and not in an F-16
Fighting Falcon. Pilots need access to the right type and quantity of data
during a flight to make good decisions. The outcomes from the observa-
tion phase of the OODA loop will directly affect how the pilot responds
in the orientation and decision phases. Aircraft engineers exercise good
judgment themselves when they optimize the first phase of the OODA
loop. The choice of flight instruments to include in an aircraft is deter-
mined not just by physical space constraints but by the limitations of the
pilot himself and the environment in which he operates.
Making the best decision cannot be achieved by just increasing the
amount of data in the first phase. Decisions in the military, business, and
even one’s personal life are constrained by time, money, resources, and
people. The discipline of economics is the study of how to make the
optimal choice under a system of constraints. Economics is not restricted
to issues like the optimal amount of unemployment compensation or
10 M. JONES

the optimal amount of real estate assets that the Federal Reserve should
acquire on its balance sheet. Economic thinking is a critical element of
any decision-making process; so, it should come as no surprise that John
Boyd himself earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University
of Iowa in 1951.
Figure 1.3 shows a modification of the OODA loop in which data
collection cannot increase without limits. The OODA loop is subject
to the economic constraints of people, time, resources, and money.
Increasing the data observation phase will inevitably affect what happens
in the other phases of the OODA loop. In this modification of the OODA
loop, an individual who spends more time in data collection must spend
less time deciding what to do. Perhaps this allocation of time is appro-
priate if the organizational structure is hierarchical and the decision can
be made unilaterally by one leader. However, if the decision requires the
passage of a piece of legislation, then achieving consensus in the deci-
sion phase may take considerably more time. The OODA loop subject to
economic constraints also shows that more of the same type of data may
not be sufficient. The decision-maker may need different types of data—a
topic we will explore in detail later in the book.
This new OODA loop shows that, at times, good judgment may
require less data and more context, or it may require less data and
more time to generate consensus. In his book Nicomachean Ethics , Aris-
totle describes a virtue as a mean (or average) between the extremes
of excess and deficiency. For example, Aristotle described bravery as a
virtue, since it was the mean between recklessness and cowardice. Reck-
less behavior reflects excessive passion and actions without meaningful
thought to the consequences, and a coward is unwilling to engage the
enemy because they lack the conviction to spur action. Within the OODA
loop, a decision-maker demonstrates the virtue of good judgment when
he allocates the right amount of time and resources to the first phase of
observation and data collection. In this first phase of the OODA loop,
decision-makers must have the right amount of data to make better deci-
sions. If this amount of data is absent, then the orientation phase will be
adversely affected. The danger of having too little data is evident because
an individual cannot make an informed decision otherwise. However, the
danger of possessing too much data is not as clear. When people them-
selves run into biological and psychological limitations of processing large
amounts of data, poor decisions occur. Because having the right amount
of data is critical to good decisions, this book will devote several chapters
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

Fig. 1.3 OODA loop subject to economic constraints

to explaining what can go wrong when too much data is collected in the
first phase of the OODA loop.

Judgment in the Digital Economy

In their book Prediction Machines, the economists Ajay Agrawal, Joshua
Gans, and Avi Goldfarb argue that the explosion of data and artifi-
cial intelligence has led to rapid improvements in prediction accuracy.
Increased prediction accuracy is a hallmark of the digital economy since
humans and even machines orient themselves and make decisions to
improve the world. Prediction takes information that you have to generate
information that you don’t have.8 Because prediction is such a critical
input into decision-making, the authors make the case that the digital
economy has indirectly led to a division of labor between machines and
humans. Computers have become better at making predictions when
the decision is based on large quantities of complex data. This allows
humans to focus their efforts on exercising judgment in decision-making.
12 M. JONES

Judgment requires humans to place priorities and values on alternatives

under consideration. It also involves the selection of data that drive the
computer’s prediction.

———————————————————————————————
As machine intelligence improves, the value of human prediction skills
will decrease…Using the language of economics, judgment is a comple-
ment to prediction and therefore when the cost of prediction falls demand
for judgment rises. We’ll want more human judgment.9
——————————————————————————————

In other words, a good decision requires more than just an accurate

prediction; it also requires an understanding of how and why the predic-
tion was made. This understanding can be acquired if meaning can be
extracted from the data. In Plato’s dialogue Meno, Socrates explains why
accurate predictions alone are insufficient for making good decisions.10
He proposes a thought experiment in which he asks a stranger for direc-
tions to Larissa, a city in the Greek region of Thessaly. The stranger might
actually know the way to Larissa, perhaps because he lives there or has
visited it several times. The stranger might also just guess the way to
Larissa. Socrates supposes that if the stranger’s guess is right, does it really
matter if it were an accurate prediction or if it were based on true knowl-
edge? Socrates will still travel in the same direction and arrive at the same
time regardless of the reason for the directions.
Socrates proposes a solution to the problem in which knowledge is
an opinion, or prediction, that is tied down. He compares knowledge
to the statues created by the sculptor Daedalus, which were so lifelike
that they would rise up and walk away if they were not tied down. This
property of knowledge produces resilient decision-making. For example,
predictions can be more accurate on average, but they are not always
right. Any prediction has a confidence error in which a certain percentage
of the time an unexpected outcome occurs. If the lens through which
you view an event is grounded in an understanding of the data-generating
process, then you will not be tempted to change your strategy or decision
when faced with an unexpected outcome.
Consider the game of blackjack in a casino. Even if the players in the
game always make the statistically best play, the house will still collect
approximately 50 cents on every 100 dollars bet. The house has a financial
advantage in blackjack of about 0.5%. In contrast, slot machines generate
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

a much better advantage for the casino. These one-armed bandits generate
anywhere between 10 and 30 dollars for the casino for every 100 dollars
bet.
Suppose a casino knows that a playing card deck has not been tampered
with because the casino manufactures the cards in its own facilities. In the
game of blackjack, the casino follows rules it has established in advance.
For example, if the point total from the cards in the dealer’s hand equals
16 or less, the dealer will draw another card. The dealer always goes
last, and when it is his turn, he will continue to draw cards until the
point total equals 17 or higher. The house advantage of 0.5% is based on
following these rules, but the house is not guaranteed to collect 50 cents
for every 100 dollars bet. Any casino game has an element of random-
ness. It is certainly possible that the casino could lose money on any
given night. Assuming that there were no regulations in place, the casino
may be tempted to change the rules in response to an unlucky streak.
But knowledge of the theory of probability and statistics, along with an
understanding of the rules of the game, will ground the casino’s decision
to not change the rules.
Knowledge can also work in favor of individual bettors. Setting aside
the ethical question of card counting in blackjack, card counters can actu-
ally swing the odds in their favor because the house advantage is so
low. Card counting works because after the casino has dealt a significant
number of cards from the deck, the player is faced with a different prob-
ability of reaching 21. An accurate count of certain types of cards, like
face cards or aces, can potentially shift the odds in favor of the player.
For a period of time in the 1980s and 1990s, a group of current and
former MIT students counted cards and made several millions of dollars
by taking advantage of this shift in probabilities when playing with the
remaining cards in the deck.11
Casinos keep records of the outcomes and payouts of their games. In
this case, a theory of card counting is crucial in protecting the casino’s
financial interests. A card counter makes money by keeping his bets as
low as possible until the number of cards in the deck has been reduced.
At that time, he will dramatically increase his bets in order to capitalize
on the odds in his favor. In other words, he offsets the earlier small losses
with a few big wins. With an understanding of that theory, the casino
now at least has a strategy for dealing with card counting. They must
track bets made by the same player over time. Big bets by themselves
14 M. JONES

are not indicative of card counting, but dramatic shifts in betting tenden-
cies by the same player might be indicative of card counting. Blackjack
hands often have a minimum and a maximum bet limit that can also help
mitigate any financial losses from card counting. A blackjack table with
a maximum bet of $1,000 might require a $5 minimum bet. A player
cannot card count while putting down a trivial amount of money. Because
data should be tied down or grounded, a decision-maker in a casino must
understand the environment and incentives behind the casino’s data. With
this understanding, the casino can detect and mitigate losses from card
counting.
Individuals with a high degree of data literacy not only make more
resilient decisions, but they can also explain those decisions and teach
others how to make good decisions as well. In the book Prediction
Machines, the authors describe how improvements in a technology called
neural networks have improved prediction accuracy. Neural networks are
algorithms that are modeled on how the human brain processes informa-
tion, and data analysts are increasingly using them in the Information
Age. Essentially, neural networks rely on sophisticated algorithms and
large quantities of data to identify patterns in the data. Companies like
Facebook and Twitter use these types of algorithms to predict whether
an ad contains false or misleading information or if a user post contains a
violent threat.
The danger for decision-makers is that these neural networks are essen-
tially black boxes. Suppose an analyst relies on a neural network to identify
whether an image contains a cat. Neural networks will take thousands
or even millions of images in which some images have been labeled by
humans as containing a cat. A neural network will analyze the patterns in
the past images and predict whether a new image contains a cat. Unfor-
tunately, neural networks do not actually explain what a cat is. They can
only identify patterns in the data that are consistent with what a human
being labels as a cat. In contrast, a biologist can explain and identify a cat
by its characteristics. Someone with the skill of data literacy is like a biol-
ogist for data. These individuals understand the structure and meaning of
data, and they can explain this meaning to others. In the digital economy,
the widespread dissemination of data alone is insufficient to make good
decisions. Data literacy is required to extract meaning from the data.
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

Notes
1. “Negative Oil: Planet Money,” NPR.org, accessed July 9, 2020, https://
www.npr.org/2020/04/22/842095406/episode-993-negative-oil.
2. “90% Of Today’s Data Created In Two Years,” accessed October 16,
2018, https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/291358/90-of-
todays-data-created-in-two-years.html.
3. “Automation and the Future of Work – Understanding the Numbers,”
Oxford Martin School, accessed April 23, 2019, https://www.oxfordmar
tin.ox.ac.uk/opinion/view/404.
4. “Tech Suffers from Lack of Humanities, Says Mozilla Head | Technology
| The Guardian,” accessed October 15, 2018, https://www.theguardian.
com/technology/2018/oct/12/tech-humanities-misinformation-philos
ophy-psychology-graduates-mozilla-head-mitchell-baker.
5. Scott Hartley, The Fuzzy and the Techie: Why the Liberal Arts Will Rule
the Digital World (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017).
6. Robert Coram, Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
(Hachette + ORM, 2002).
7. John Boyd, “Organic Design for Command and Control: A Discourse on
Winning and Losing,” 1987, https://www.coljohnboyd.com/static/doc
uments/1987-05__Boyd_John_R__Organic_Design_for_Command_and_
Control__PPT-PDF.pdf.
8. Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb, Prediction Machines: The
Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence (Harvard Business Press, 2018).
9. Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb, “The Simple Economics
of Machine Intelligence,” Harvard Business Review, November
17, 2016, https://hbr.org/2016/11/the-simple-economics-of-machine-
intelligence.
10. Michael P. Lynch, The Internet of Us: Knowing More and Understanding
Less in the Age of Big Data (W. W. Norton & Company, 2016).
11. Ben Mezrich, 21: Bringing Down the House - Movie Tie-In: The Inside
Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions (Simon and
Schuster, 2008).
 CHAPTER 2

Know Your Limits

It’s never going to get tired, and it’s never going to get overconfident,
and it’s just going to kill you. That’s the difference now. It’s like playing
the Terminator.
—Maurice Ashley, American Grand Chessmaster1

∗ ∗ ∗

Over the next several chapters, situations will be explored in which more
data complicates the environment for both users and creators of data.
People present one of the most challenging constraints in the decision-
maker’s OODA loop. Unlike machines, which can process increasingly
larger amounts of data with sufficient computing resources, humans
quickly reach a cognitive limit. People process data differently than
machines. Biology, society, and history have all shaped the way humans
incorporate data into their decision-making process. In addition, when
humans generate data, the data production process itself may also alter
human behavior. These complications may not arise every time or in every
situation, but decision-makers must be aware of their existence and be
prepared to handle them when they do appear. This particular chapter
examines those circumstances when too much data affects how humans
process and interpret data.

∗ ∗ ∗

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 17

Switzerland AG 2022
M. Jones, More Judgment Than Data,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99472-3_2
18 M. JONES

Information Overload
Chess was created nearly 1,500 years ago in India, but its popu-
larity transcends time and geography.2 Individuals from various countries
have battled since the first official world chess champion, the Austrian-
American Wilhelm Steinitz, was crowned in 1886. Since that time,
world chess champions have hailed from France, Russia, India, the
United States, and many other countries. Bobby Fischer became the first
American-born world chess champion in 1972 when he defeated the
Soviet Union champion, Boris Spassky. The match was publicized as a
Cold War battle between the two great world powers in the book Bobby
Fischer Goes to War: How a Lone American Star Defeated the Soviet Chess
Machine.3 From the automaton chess player in the eighteenth century to
IBM’s Deep Blue, humans possess a rich history of playing against chess
machines.
The history of chess machines begins in the 1760s with a Hungarian
inventor, Wolfgang von Kempelen, who created a mechanical turk to play
chess.4 The turk was a fabrication of a human body wearing Ottoman
robes and a turban on his head. The left hand was suspended above a
chess board and controlled by a human being inside the machine. Despite
the mechanical turk being a hoax, it inspired humans to dream about
the possibilities of a chess-playing machine. The inflection point in the
man vs. machine war occurred when world champion Garry Kasparov
played IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue over six games in 1997. Just a
few years earlier, Kasparov completely dismissed the idea that a computer
could beat a chessmaster. After being asked if a computer could beat a
chess grandmaster before the year 2000, he replied, “No way.” He also
mocked any chessmaster who might lose saying, “If any grandmaster has
difficulties playing computers, I would be happy to provide my advice.”5
Kasparov should have taken his own advice. IBM’s programmers
trained the supercomputer Deep Blue from the data of thousands of chess
games played by former chessmasters. During its matches against humans,
Deep Blue analyzed the board and numerically rated the value of each
of the millions of potential positions. It selected its move based on the
highest possible rating.6 While Kasparov won the first game of the six-
game series, he lost the second game in a controversial move after he
claimed that Deep Blue made a human-like move.7 The next three games
ended in a draw, but Deep Blue won the sixth and final game, resulting
in Kasparov’s defeat. Kasparov demanded a rematch, but IBM refused
 2 KNOW YOUR LIMITS 19

and disassembled Deep Blue. The fact that IBM programmers tweaked
Deep Blue’s code between the matches further fanned the flames of a
conspiracy theory. While the match is still shrouded in controversy, world
champion Vladimir Kramnik’s loss to the chess program Deep Fritz in
2006 cemented the machine’s superior position over humans in chess to
this day.
Machine superiority over humans is not limited to the game of chess.
Go, one of the oldest board games in the world and thought to have orig-
inated in China, is a game that humans dominated as late as 2014.8 The
game board is a 19 by 19 grid of lines that represent 361 points. Players
alternate placing white and black stones on the board in an attempt to
surround the opponent’s piece. The winner is determined primarily by
the number of captured pieces and the amount of surrounded territory.
Despite the simple rules of the game, the calculations that a computer
processes to determine its next move are considerably more complex
in Go than in chess. In 2017, only three years after humans domi-
nated computers in the game of Go, Google wrote a program called
AlphaGo that defeated the number one rated player in the world, Ke
Jie.9 AlphaGo’s algorithm was extensively trained using previous matches
from human and computer players. Shortly after AlphaGo’s defeat of Ke
Jie, Google released an even more impressive version called AlphaGo Zero
in which the program did not even study human matches at all. The soft-
ware played against itself intensively over a three-day period to develop its
techniques. AlphaGo Zero then played its earlier version, AlphaGo, and
defeated it 100 games to zero games. Regardless of whether AlphaGo
learned from data generated by human matches or from playing itself,
extensive amounts of data enable a computer to learn and program a
better version of itself.
Whereas computers benefit from accessing more data, humans do
not always experience the same benefits. Data needs to be processed,
analyzed, and put into context to be useful information in a decision-
making process. As more data is generated, computers are equipped with
more memory and more processing power. Computers today have several
orders of magnitude more memory compared to computers from just two
decades ago. Unfortunately, humans reach their limits in data processing
quickly. The claim that humans can only hold between five and nine items
in their working memory, otherwise known as Miller’s Law, is based on
a paper by the psychologist George Miller called “The Magical Number
Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing
20 M. JONES

Information.”10 Humans cannot just add more memory chips to their

brain. There is a cognitive limit to our processing capacity.
Marketers have long recognized the power and importance of
conveying data to potential customers. Product data can be distributed
through media, packaging, free trials, and many other marketing strate-
gies. A marketer must decide not only how to present the product but also
how much data about the product to share—a question of both quality
and quantity. The physical nature of many products limits the amount
of information that can be conveyed to a potential consumer, but with
the growing use of digital products, there is a significant decrease in the
cost of publishing information. This decision about information quantity
is faced not only by the manufacturer but also by the retailer as well. On
its website, an online retailer must decide whether to display links to simi-
larly purchased products, how to display product reviews, whether there
should be a video of the product’s features, and other important display
elements.
The merchant faces a tradeoff in these decisions due to a consumer’s
limited ability to process more information. Suppose a person wants to
purchase a computer, but each model contains dozens of features: the
amount of memory, the operating system, the size of the screen, the
processor speed, the length and extent of the manufacturer’s warranty,
etc. The challenge for the computer manufacturer is that consumers may
not understand the importance and quality of each of these features
until the consumer undertakes research for themselves. Researching these
features takes time and imposes a cost on the consumer. Marketing
research has found that when consumers are faced with a purchasing deci-
sion, they must estimate how much information to process in order to
make a good decision.11 At some point, a consumer will stop researching
the product and make a decision on whether or not to purchase it.
Because the manufacturer cannot control the order in which consumers
will process the information, the average value of each feature to the
consumer’s purchase decision is lower when more features are advertised.
At the same time, the cost to research any particular feature does not
change. As a result, when the manufacturer advertises more features, a
consumer will stop his research earlier when the perceived value of any
one feature is less than the cost to research the feature. This phenomenon
is called the information overload effect.
Note that the optimum number of advertised features is not zero.
Every customer is unique, and advertising a particular feature might be
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Charles S. Grossman
In the old days, housekeeping in the Smokies allowed
few if any frills. Aunt Rhodie Abbott, and most other
women, worked as hard as any man as they went
about their daily chores keeping their families fed and
clothed.
 Part 2

Highland Homeland
 A home in the Smokies usually meant a simple log
house nestled in the hills among the trees and amidst
the haze.
National Park Service
 Homecoming
It is summer now, a time for coming home. And on an August
Sunday in the mountain-green valley they call Cataloochee, the
kinfolk arrive. They come from 50 states to gather here, at a one-
room white frame Methodist church by the banks of the Big
“Catalooch.” The appearance of their shiny cars and bulky campers
rolling along the paved Park Service road suggests that they are
tourists, too, a tiny part of the millions who visit and enjoy the Great
Smoky Mountains each year. Yet these particular families represent
something more. A few of them were raised here; their ancestors
lived and died here.
They are celebrating their annual Cataloochee homecoming. Other
reunions, held on Sundays throughout the summer, bring together
one-time residents of almost every area in the park. Some of the
places instantly recall bits of history: Greenbrier, once a heavily
populated cove and political nerve-center; Elkmont, where a
blacksmith named Huskey set out one winter to cross the Smokies
and was discovered dead in a bear trap the next spring; and
Smokemont on the beautiful Oconaluftee River, at one time the
home of the Middle Cherokee and the very heart of that Indian
Nation.
These are special days, but they observe a universal experience as
old as Homer’s Ulysses, as new as the astronauts’ return from the
moon: homecoming. It is an experience particularly significant in the
Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Here, at different times and
in different ways, people of various races and heritage have
reluctantly given up hearth and farm so that today new generations
can come to this green kingdom of some 209,000 hectares (517,000
acres) and rediscover a natural homeland which is the heritage of all.
Beginning on Canada’s Gaspé Peninsula as a limestone finger only
2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) wide, the Appalachian mountain system
that dominates eastern America slants about 5,000 kilometers (3,000
miles) southwest across New England and the Atlantic and border
states into northern Georgia and Alabama, culminating in the
grandeur and complexity of the Great Smoky Mountains. This range,
which marks the dividing line between Tennessee and North
Carolina, is high; its 58-kilometer (36-mile) crest remains more than
1,500 meters (4,900 feet) above sea level. It is ancient—the Ocoee
rocks here are estimated to be 500-600 million years old—and its tall
peaks and plunging valleys have been sculpted by nature through
the action of ice and water during long, patient centuries. The odd
and fantastic courses of the rivers here indicate that they are older
than the mountains. The Great Smokies are a land of moving waters;
there is no natural lake or pond in this area, but there are some
1,000 kilometers (620 miles) of streams with more than 70 species of
fish. A generous rainfall, averaging as much as 229 centimeters (90
inches) per year in some localities and 211 centimeters (83 inches)
atop Clingmans Dome, nourishes a rich variety of plantlife: more
than 100 species of trees, 1,200 other flowering plants, 50 types of
fern, 500 mosses and lichens, and 2,000 fungi. The mixed hardwood
forest and virgin stands of balsam and spruce are the special glories
of the Smokies.
Many of the species of birds that make the Smokies their home do
not have to leave to migrate; by migrating vertically, from the valleys
to the mountaintops in summer and back down in winter, they can
experience the equivalent of a journey at sea level from Georgia to
New England. Animals large and small find this a congenial home,
and two, the wild boar and the black bear, are especially interesting
to visitors. The former shuns people, but the latter is occasionally
seen along trails and roadsides throughout the Smokies.
When the Great Smoky Mountains were added to the National Park
System in 1934, a unique mission was accomplished: more than
6,600 separate tracts of land had been purchased by the citizens of
Tennessee and North Carolina and given to the people of the United
States. Previously, most national parks had been created from lands
held by the Federal Government. The story of the Great Smokies is,
therefore, most especially and significantly, a story of people and
their home. Part of that story is captured in microcosm on an August
Sunday in a secluded northeastern corner of the park: Cataloochee.
History is what the homecoming is about. The people of Cataloochee
worship and sing and eat and celebrate because they are back. And
being back, they remember. They walk up the narrow creeks,
banked by thick tangles of rhododendron and dog-hobble, to the
sites of old homesteads. They watch their small children and
grandchildren wade the water and trample the grass of once-familiar
fields. They call themselves Caldwell, Palmer, Hannah, Woody,
Bennett, Messer. For exactly a century—from the late 1830s and the
coming of the first permanent white settlers to the later 1930s and
the coming of the park—men and women with these names lived
along Cataloochee Creek. But these pioneers were not the first to
inhabit a valley that they called by an Indian name.
By “Gad-a-lu-tsi,” the Cherokees meant “standing up in ranks.” As
they looked from Cove Creek Gap at the eastern end of the valley
across toward the Balsam Mountains, they used that term to
describe the thin stand of timber at the top of the distant range.
Later, the name became “Cataloochee,” or the colloquial
“Catalooch,” and it referred to the entire watershed of the central
stream.
The Cherokees liked what they saw. They hunted and fished
throughout the area and established small villages along one of their
main trails. The Cataloochee Track, as it came to be known, ran from
Cove Creek Gap at the eastern edge of the present-day park up over
the Smokies and down through what is now the Cosby section of
eastern Tennessee. It connected large Indian settlements along the
upper French Broad River in North Carolina with the equally
important Overhill Towns of the Tennessee River.
By the early 1700s, Cataloochee formed a minor portion of the great
Cherokee Nation whose towns and villages extended from eastern
Tennessee and western North Carolina into northern Georgia. But as
time went on, and as the white settlements pushed westward from
the wide eastern front, the Cherokees lost dominion over this vast
area. In 1791, at the treaty of Holston, the Cherokees gave up
Cataloochee along
with much of what is
now East
Tennessee. Five
years later the state
of North Carolina
granted 71,210
hectares (176,000
acres), including all
of Cataloochee, to
John Gray Blount—
brother to William
Blount, governor of
the Territory South
of the Ohio River, as
Tennessee was then
called. Blount kept
the land for
speculation, but it
eventually sold for
less than one cent
per hectare. Now
that the Cherokees
had relinquished the
land, no one else
seemed to want it.
Even the famous
Methodist Bishop
Francis Asbury, first
sent as a missionary Alan Rinehart
to America in 1771, With their trusty mule and
apparently wavered sourwood sled, Giles and Lenard
in his spirit when Ownby haul wood for making
confronted with the shingles.
Cataloochee
wilderness. In his
journal in 1810 he lamented:
“At Catahouche I walked over a log. But O the mountain height after
height, and five miles over! After crossing other streams, and losing
ourselves in the woods, we came in, about nine o’clock at night....
What an awful day!”
During the 1820s, only a few hunters, trappers, and fishermen built
overnight cabins in the area. Then in 1834, Col. Robert Love, who
had migrated from Virginia, fought in the Revolutionary War, and
established a farm near the present city of Asheville, purchased the
original Blount tract for $3,000. To keep title to the land, Love was
required to maintain permanent settlers there. He encouraged cattle
ranging and permitted settlers choice locations and unlimited terms,
and by the late 1830s several families had moved into Cataloochee.
Probably the first settler to put down roots was young Levi Caldwell,
a householder in his early twenties seeking a good home for his new
family. The rich bottomlands and abundant forests of Cataloochee
offered that home, and before Levi Caldwell died in 1864 at the age
of 49, he and his wife “Polly” (Mary Nailling) had 11 children. Levi
was a prisoner during the Civil War, and two of his sons, Andrew and
William Harrison, fought on different sides. Because he had tended
horses for the widely feared band of Union soldiers called Kirk’s
Army, Andy received a $12 pension when the war was over. William,
who might have forgiven and forgotten his differences with the Union
as a whole, was never quite reconciled to his brother’s pension.
Although he was older than Levi Caldwell by a full 21 years, George
Palmer arrived later at Catalooch. The Palmers had settled further
northeast in the North Carolina mountains, on Sandy Mush Creek,
and seemed content there. But when George decided to start over,
he and his wife, also named Polly, took their youngest children,
Jesse and George Lafayette, and crossed the mountains south into
Cataloochee. They began again.
Other families trickled in. As elsewhere in Southern Appalachia,
buffalo traces and old Indian trails and more recent traders’ paths
gradually became roads and highways penetrating the thick forests
and mountain fastnesses. In 1846, the North Carolina legislature
passed an act creating the Jonathan Creek and Tennessee Mountain
Turnpike Company, which was to build a road no less than 3.7
Edouard E. Exline
Cataloochee and Caldwell—the names are nearly
synonymous. The Lush Caldwell family once lived in
this sturdy log house with shake roof and stone
chimneys on Messer Fork. At another time, this was
the home of the E. J. Messers, another of
Cataloochee’s predominant families.

meters (12 feet) wide and no steeper than a 12 percent grade. Tolls
would range from 75 cents for a six-horse wagon down to a dime for
a man or a horse and one cent for each hog or sheep. After a full five
years of deliberation and examining alternatives, the company
selected a final route and constructed the highway with minor
difficulty. The road fully utilized the natural contours of the land and
was at the same time a generally direct line. It followed almost
exactly the old Cherokee Trail.
The Cataloochee Turnpike was the first real wagon road in the
Smokies. It opened up a chink in the area’s armor of isolation. Travel
to and from the county seat still required the better part of three
days, however. Two of the rare 19th century literary visitors to these
mountains—Wilbur Zeigler and Ben Grosscup, whose book The
Heart of the Alleghanies, appeared in 1883—entered Cataloochee
along this road. Their reaction provides a pleasant contrast to that of
Bishop Asbury; they speak of the “canon of the Cataluche” as being
“the most picturesque valley of the Great Smoky range:”
“The mountains are timbered, but precipitous; the narrow, level lands
between are fertile; farm houses look upon a rambling road, and a
creek, noted as a prolific trout stream, runs a devious course through
hemlock forests, around romantic cliffs, and between laureled
banks.”
During the 1840s and 1850s, some 15 or 20 families built their sturdy
log cabins ax-hewn out of huge chestnuts and poplars, and then built
barns, smokehouses, corncribs, and other farm shelters beside the
rocky creeks. George Palmer’s son Lafayette, called “Fate” for short,
married one of Levi Caldwell’s daughters and established a large
homestead by the main stream. Fate’s brother, Jesse, married and
had 13 children; 6 of these 13 later married Caldwells.
 Pages 22-23: These proud people all dressed up in
their Sunday best are members of the George H.
Caldwell family.
H. C. Wilburn
They ate well. The creek bottomlands provided rich soil for tomatoes,
corn and beans, cabbage and onions, potatoes and pumpkins. Split
rail fences were devices to keep the cattle, hogs, and sheep out of
the crops; the animals themselves foraged freely throughout the
watershed, fattening on succulent grasses and an ample mast of
acorns and chestnuts. Corn filled the cribs, salted pork and beef
layered the meathouse, and cold bountiful springs watered the
valley.
The Civil War erupted in 1861. Although Cataloochee lay officially in
the Confederacy, this creek country was so remote, so distant from
the slave plantations of the deep South, that no government
dominated. Raiding parties from both sides rode through the valley,
killing and looting as they went. Near Mt. Sterling Gap at the
northern end of the watershed, Kirk’s Army made a man named
Grooms play a fiddle before they murdered him. The people of
Catalooch kept his memory alive throughout the century by playing
that ill-starred “Grooms tune.”
But the war was only an interlude. Five years after its end,
Cataloochee was estimated to have 500 hogs, sheep, milch cows,
beef cattle, and horses; some 900 kilograms (2,000 pounds) of
honey; and about 1,250 liters (1,320 quarts) of sorghum molasses.
Sizable apple crops would begin to flourish during the next decade,
and by 1900 the population of the valley would grow to over 700.
Producing more than they themselves could use, these farmers
began to trade with the outside world. They took their apples,
livestock, chestnuts, eggs, honey, and ginseng to North Carolina
markets in Fines Creek, Canton, and Waynesville, and to Tennessee
outlets in Cosby, Newport, and Knoxville. With their cash money,
they changed forever the Cataloochee of the early 1800s.
They sold honey and bought the tools of education. Using the tough,
straight wood of a black gum or a basswood, a farmer hollowed out a
section of the trunk with a chisel. He then slid a cross-stick through a
hole bored near the bottom. Upon transplanting a beehive into the
trunk and leaving an entrance at the bottom, he covered the top with
a solid wooden lid and sealed it airtight with a mixture of mud and
swamp-clay. In August, especially after the sourwoods had bloomed
and the bees had built up a store of the delicately flavored honey, the
beekeeper took a long hooked honey knife, broke the sealing, and
cut out squares of the light golden comb to fill ten-gallon tins. He
never went below the cross-stick; that honey was left for the bees.
An enterprising family might trade 10 tins of honey in a season. And
at the market, they would turn that honey into school supplies for the
coming year: shoes, books, tablets, and pencils.
 Like many others in the Smokies, Dan Myers of Cades
Cove kept a few bees. He apparently was a little more
carefree than some about the tops of his bee gums, or
hives. Some old boards or scraps of tin, with the help
of a couple of rocks, sufficed, whereas most people
sealed their wooden tops with a little mud.
Charles S. Grossman
There were too few families on Big Cataloochee for both a Methodist
and a Baptist church. In 1858 Colonel Love’s son had deeded a
small tract there for the Palmers, Bennetts, Caldwells, and Woodys
to use as a Methodist meetinghouse and school. Since then, the
Messers and Hannahs and several others had formed a community
of their own 8 kilometers (5 miles) north, across Noland Mountain,
along the smaller valley of the Little Cataloochee. They built a
Baptist church there in 1890.
But the differences were not great. One of the Big Cataloochee’s
sons became and remained the high sheriff of sprawling Haywood
County with the well-nigh solid support of the combined Cataloochee
vote. Running six times in succession and against a candidate from
the southeastern part of the county, he was rumored to have waited
each time for the more accessible lowlands to record their early
returns. Then he simply contacted a cousin, who happened to be the
recorder for Cataloochee, who would ask in his slow, easy voice,
“How many do you need, cousin?”
The preacher came once a month. He stayed with different families
in the community and met the rest at church. More informal
gatherings, such as Sunday School and singings, took place each
week. And during late summer or fall, when crops were “laid by” and
there was an interval between spring’s cultivation and autumn’s
harvest, there came the socializing and fervor of camp meeting. A
one-week or ten-day revival was cause for school to be let out at 11
o’clock each morning. The children were required to attend long and
fervent services. But between exhortations there were feasts of food,
frolicking in nearby fields and streams, and for everyone an
exchange of good fellowship.
Besides these religious gatherings, women held bean-stringings and
quilting bees, men assembled for logrollings or house-raisings to
clear new lands and build new homes. One of the few governmental
intrusions into Cataloochee life was the road requirement. During the
spring and fall, all able-bodied men were “warned out” for six days—
eight if there had been washout rains—to keep up what had become
the well-used Cataloochee Turnpike. If a man brought a mule and a
bull-tongue plow instead of the usual mattock, he received double
time for ditching the sides of the road. This heavy work gave the men
both a chance to talk and something to talk about. But any of them
would still have said that the hardest job of the year was hoeing corn
all day on a lonely, stony hillside.
By the early 1900s, Cataloochee had become a mixture of isolation
from the outside world and communication with it. Outside laws had
affected the valley; in 1885 North Carolina passed the controversial
No Fence law, which made fences within townships unnecessary
and required owners to keep cattle, sheep, horses, and hogs inside
certain bounds. But other laws were less heeded; local experts have
estimated that 95 percent of Cataloochee residents made their own
whisky. Several families subscribed to a newspaper—“Uncle Jim”
Woody took The Atlanta Constitution—and almost everyone
possessed the “wish-book:” a dog-eared mail order catalog. But no
one in Little Cataloochee bought an automobile.
The valley thrived on local incidents. A man shot a deputy sheriff and
hid out near a large rock above Fate Palmer’s homestead; Neddy
McFalls and Dick Clark fed him there for years. Will Messer, a
master carpenter and coffinmaker over on Little Catalooch, had a
daughter named Ola. Messer was postmaster, and the post office
acquired her name. Fate Palmer’s shy son, Robert, became known
as the “Booger Man” after he hid his face in his arms and gave that
as his name to a new teacher on the first day of school.
George Palmer, son of Jesse and brother to Sheriff William, devised
a method of capturing wild turkeys. He first built a log enclosure,
then dug a trench under one side and baited it with corn. The next
morning 10 turkeys, too frightened to retrace their steps through the
trench, showed up inside the enclosure. But when George stepped
among them and attempted to catch them, the turkeys gave him the
beating of his life. Thereafter he was called “Turkey George.” And his
daughter, Nellie, lent her name to one of the two post offices on Big
Catalooch.
 “Turkey George” Palmer of Pretty Hollow Creek in
Cataloochee used to tell people that he had killed 105
bears. Most of them he trapped in bear pens.
Edouard E. Exline
Yet the simplicity of life could not insulate the Cataloochee area from
“progress.” As the 20th century unfolded, scattered individual loggers
gave way to the well organized methods of large company
operations. Small-scale cutting of yellow-tulip poplar and cherry
boomed into big business during the early 1900s. Suncrest Lumber
Company, with a sawmill in Waynesville, began operations on
Cataloochee Creek and hauled out hardwood logs in great
quantities. Although the spruce and balsam at the head of the
watershed were left standing, the logging industry, with its capital,
manpower, and influence, vastly altered the valley.
With the late 1920s came an announcement that the states of North
Carolina and Tennessee had decided to give the Great Smoky
Mountains to the nation as a park. The residents of Cataloochee
were incredulous. They were attached to this homeplace; they still
referred to a short wagon ride as a trip and called a visit to the
county seat a journey. But the park arrived, and the young families of
the valley moved away, and then the older ones did the same.
Gradually they came to understand that another sort of homeland
had been established. And the strangers who now visit their valleys
and creeks can look about and appreciate the heritage these settlers
and their descendants left behind.
The old families still come back. They return to this creek on the
August Sunday of Homecoming. In the early morning hours they fill
the wooden benches of tiny Palmer’s Chapel for singing and
preaching and reminiscing; at noon they share bountiful food spread
on long plank tables beside clear, rushing Cataloochee Creek; in the
mellow afternoon they rediscover the valley. For what lures the
stranger is what lures the old families back. They come to sense
again the beauty and the permanence and even the foggy mystery of
the Great Smokies. And this that beckons them back is that which