My group learned an important lesson about how easy it is to make mistakes when dealing with large amounts of data. We wanted to examine the effects of FDI on Chinese exports to African countries out to five years in the future. So, at Col. Sanborn’s suggestion, we simply shifted the Export column down one, thus lining up Export values with FDI values from the previous year (or so we thought). Then, we shifted it down two rows for two years in the future, three for three years, and so on. We were excited to discover that, when we ran bivariate correlations using this shifted data, the Pearson’s coefficient increased from .210 the year the FDI was received to .365 five years after the year of receipt. However, our excitement was short-lived, as we discovered that we had ignored the fact that our data came from multiple countries. Simply shifting the Export column down worked within a country’s data, but once it crossed over the line into another country’s data it became misaligned. So, for instance, SPSS was running correlations on the relationship between Chinese FDI to Angola in 2015 and Chinese exports to Benin in 2003, which didn’t provide any insight into whether or not there was a causal link.

The good news is, once we fixed the problem and only compared FDI and Exports for the same country, we reran the program and found that there was an even stronger correlation with the correct data than with the flawed data. The Pearson’s Coefficient decreased slightly from 0.210 the year of receipt to .183 one year after, but then increased steadily after that to .250 three years after, .384 four years after, and finally .423 five years after. This data shows that, not only is Chinese FDI a good predictor of Chinese exports to a given African country the same year it is received, but it becomes a better predictor as time passes. Indeed, FDI is twice as good at predicting Exports five years after it is received than in the original year of receipt. This supports our hypothesis that Chinese FDI to African countries has a positive impact on Chinese exports to those countries, and thus further suggests that Chinese FDI is indeed serving China’s strategic interests in Africa. The fact that both we and Col. Sanborn failed to realize the error demonstrates just how easy it is to make mistakes when manipulating large amounts of data, and how those mistakes can effect research results.