Grad school teaches us to spend weeks thinking about a problem and coming up with an elegant or novel methodology to solve it (sometimes without even looking at data). This process certainly has its place, but in some contexts a better outcome is to produce an unsophisticated but useful and data-driven answer, and then refine it further as needed. Sometimes the simple answer provides 80% of the benefit, and there is no reason to deprive the consumers of your method this short-term win while you optimize for the remaining 20%.I wish more people doing academic research thought this way. Striving for perfection is a habit that dies very hard.
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