I think it's more perpetuated by the fact that executives and other corporate-folk are easily hypnotized by numbers, however irrelevant they may be. "Interestingly, peak purchases for our product in March occurred Monday through Friday between 7am and 4:30pm, with 807 people looked at page x before purchasing and 806 people looking at page y. Through running our data against national averages, we've found that our peak purchasing times align and are roughly proportionate to population density across the country." You can watch in amazement as every MBA in the room's eyes gloss over; a dopey smile overcomes them slowly as the data intoxicates them.

Throw in a line graph and a heat map and you're basically on a fast track to a promotion without even saying a single useful thing.