Engine Trouble?!

In the case concerning carter racing, I believed that they should have raced initially. I say initially because after further analysis several other factors become significant that may have an influence upon the situation. At first analysis it seems that they have something to lose in every situation or at least that's what I drew from a first read. It seemed to me that it would be wise to take the situation which had the least amount of losses, and in this case would be not to race. My views were persuaded to see the other way when we entered our groups. Within my group we discussed the pros and cons and came to a reasonable consensus that racing would be the most profitable decision. This view was even more influenced by the in class assessment of the statistical data within the case. Having numbers to put with the data made the decision even clearer to me. Facts and data make the decision easier to evaluate and are always useful in determining what choice you should make in a situation. Statistical application of data within a decision making problem is an invaluable resource that should almost always be used. I say almost because some situations can't or won't be able to use pure statistical analysis to determine the correct course of action. At the end of the analysis it was revealed that this situation was actually real data collected from the events leading up to the shuttle Challenger explosion. Now we don't have all the information here. We especially don't have the perspective of the scientists and engineers that control shuttle operations at NASA, but every piece of data we are given after evaluation, points toward aborting the race/shuttle launch. Why did they still decide to launch? I do not know, but this situation highlights very much why data needs to be statistically analyzed in decision making process. The correct decision needs to be made with ALL the facts present. Nothing can be ignored no matter how small and it is important to take everything into account.