Once upon a time, there lived two individuals who seemed to have completely opposite personalities: Quallie and Quantie. Nobody thought they’d get along together well.
Quantie was all about numbers and could sometimes come across as really boring to listen to, though occasionally, there were nuggets of gold hidden among all the numbers Quantie shared. Quantie could also come across a bit sharp-edged; “the numbers speak for themselves” was a common refrain. Quantie wasn’t so much about emotions as about hard and fast numbers from lots of people at once. Give Quantie a topic to research, and you’d be sure to walk away with numbers that helped explain the subject.
Quallie, on the other hand, was seen as soft, almost squooshy in nature. Quallie loved a good, long chat, though Quallie was more likely to be asking questions than sharing information – at least at first. After Quallie spoke with what seemed like enough people about a given subject, you’d be treated to this story that summarized what Quallie learned. You could easily get drawn into the story and the quotes Quallie shared, figuring this was a much more approachable view of the subject than if Quantie were to sit down and share the numbers with you. The only problem was…sample size numbers were so small compared to what you could get from Quantie. So, while Quallie’s stories were super interesting, people usually ended up brushing them aside because they didn’t seem truly representative of what was going on in the world.
One day, Quantie and Quallie ran into each other while talking to people about a similar market research project. At first, conversation between the two was tough. Then they started talking about what they’d learned from the research they’d done. Quantie would throw out some numbers, and Quallie would excitedly respond with, “Oh my gosh! A bunch of the people I talked to said the same thing!” Occasionally, Quallie would bring up something from a set of conversations, and Quantie would say, “Huh – that’s odd, that’s not what the numbers seemed to say.” They’d both file that away as something to potentially dig into a bit deeper.
It was like magic. Quantie and Quallie found that they shared a lot more in common than they expected. They decided to work together on a report. And again, the result was magical: people found the report easier to listen to, easier to understand, and didn’t see Quantie as quite so tough to understand, or Quallie quite so easy to dismiss.
As for those times when their data seemed to disagree? Well, they found that if each side dug a bit deeper, usually there were really good explanations for the seeming discrepancies, and when there weren’t good explanations, they learned they could help each other with question phrasing.
After a while, the inevitable happened: Quantie and Quallie became life-long partners in crime. They absolutely loved how much stronger they were together than alone.