<p>I am a social scientist and non-profit consultant. I have to try to figure out what is wrong with a company with bad data and with the staff trying to make sure I never find out what is going on. In any organization what is going on is not in the brochure. This is not because it it bad per se. Every organization ends up being a social version of biodiversity. A college is a micro-ecology of social meanings and options that is highly unique. At a top school, like Princeton, the things that get people out of bed every day are indeed one little sliver of the big pie-chart of our national life. The thing is, at a top school, all those little one-in-a-million slivers are packed up against one another. Every other person is doing something amazing. Example, the girl sitting next to you in music theory II can’t seem to get Beethoven in her ear and neither can you. So that brings you together. Turns out that she can’t get Beethoven in her ear because she is the best 20 year old jazz pianist in the world. You can’t get him in your ear because you study voice and are composing new neo-renaissance melodies for the songs in The Tempest. Problems, problems. The problem with the data is that they don’t come within a mile of what motivates those students and keeps them up at night.</p>