Evidence discipline — and the claim you must refuse

mentor: An analyst's credibility rests on one habit: every claim is carried by evidence, and a claim the evidence cannot carry is refused — not softened, refused. The skill is telling the two apart.

Below are three claims about the company and its filed figures. Select the ones the figures on this screen support. The one you leave out is the point of the lesson: say, in a line, why this filing cannot support it.

Take each claim to the numbers. Some claims are arithmetic you can do from the filed revenue, cost and gross profit — a ratio, a magnitude. Others ask about something the filing does not contain, and no amount of confidence makes a forecast into filed evidence. Select what the figures support; refuse what they cannot.