The Big Picture

I've been thinking about the big picture—as in the phrase "He just doesn't get the big picture."

I've been reflecting on that phrase, and the circumstances it gets used in, and I think that it often reflects a basic misunderstanding of how understanding works.

The assumption seems to be that looking at the details gets in the way of seeing the whole—that it is somehow possible to see the forest without seeing the trees.

I've spent most of my life as an educator, in one setting or another, and one of the things I've observed, while trying to teach various subjects, is that it is almost impossible to "get" the big picture without getting the details.

We humans have a sort of fondness for focusing on large, simple, patterns, while ignoring the details. We tend to shy away from analysis—especially when we're trying to get to the bottom line.

But in the real world it's often analysis that gets us closer to the bottom line, closer to the real big picture.

Let me give you a classic example. It's called Simpson's paradox, and you can find it in almost any elementary statistics text. It's there to make a point about statistics, of course, but it involves a much broader lesson.

Suppose you had a mild, but potentially lethal, injury and had to go to a hospital for emergency treatment. Suppose, in addition, that you had the following information about two local hospitals, and their records concerning your injury:

An easy choice, though not a particularly happy one. Obviously, Hospital B has the lower death rate.

But that's not the whole story.

Suppose you have your cell with you, and can log on to the Internet to dig a little deeper. You find some more information, and break down the "Big Picture" above, into smaller pieces:

Remember, your injury was "mild". So quite suddenly your odds have improved dramatically. And now it seems that the best choice is Hospital A. Aren't you glad you dug a little deeper?

You may be thinking that this is just one of those cases where the details are more important than the big picture—a case in which the little picture is the part you should have been interested in all along.

But that isn't the point of Simpson's paradox. The real point comes from looking at all of the percentages. Hospital A is better, not just in your category, but in every category.

In fact, the real big picture is just the opposite of the one we saw before we broke things down. Mild injury or serious injury, Hospital A does a better job. The simplistic big picture was not only simplistic but false.

How can this be? The answer, in this case, is that although Hospital A did noticeably better in both mild and serious cases, both hospitals did much worse in serious cases. And it so happened that Hospital A had a lot more of the serious cases to deal with. The overall scores you looked at the first time reflected this without telling you why.

But this is just one example, and a rather easy one to explain. The basic principal goes much deeper. You can notice it in the political arena all the time—the desire not to think beyond simplistic characterizations.

Some of my favorites:

They're evil and we're good, so there's no point in asking why they act the way they do, or what we might have done to help create the situation.

There's no point in asking why people steal, or act out violently—it's just human nature.

Of course the sun goes around the earth—just look.

The poor don't have jobs, so they must be lazy.

Everything naturally stays still, unless something is moving it.

And so on.

I think we need to practice breaking things down a little more.

At least, that's what I think today.