I Feel Like I Might Have Been Born For This

I feel like I might have been born for this.

I am just now going through a set of tabs from a recently completed quantitative survey, and working in my head on what the story is for the report. Over the past several years I haven't done as much quantitative work as I once did, and that's a bit weird because the fact is that my background is entirely quantitative. I studied and taught quantitative research methods for many years, and my subsequent professional "commercial research" training with Lou Harris was entirely quantitative.

But my interest began way before all this. It actually all started when I was 5 or 6 years old. I would roll bunches of marbles on the hardwood floor in the living room of our upstairs apartment, along the narrow four-inch or so channel between the area rug and the wall, and watch the marbles hit the far wall and roll back. I would set aside the top three finishers, grab another bunch, and repeat the process over and over, setting up a series of heats that led ultimately to a champion marble.

I would do it for hours at a time, and I get a little adrenaline rush, even now, just thinking about it.

Quantitative research, at its core, involves precisely this same process. It's all about counting, sorting, developing a compelling story along the way, and coming to a conclusion.

I love this stuff.

And I do believe that I might have been born for it. That's not boastful. As the great Dizzy Dean used to say, "If you done it, it ain't braggin'."