Now anecdotal information about some of these suspects suggests that some of them were behaving in unusual ways.
What some people may not fully appreciate is the valuable supplemental role anecdotal information plays in informing Fed policymaking.
All this anecdotal information, while often more ambiguous than government statistics, is more timely and thus just as valuable.
One of our diplomatic posts received anecdotal information from a third party regarding an alleged incident in Syria in December.
That forces nervous traders and even regulators to piece together a view of a complex, global banking system using threads of data, anecdotal information and even rumors.
Constantly look for first-hand data rather than relying on anecdotal information.
Everyone passes by here each day and now social metrics and social anecdotal information is now part of our corporate culture because we were being opportunistic.
"We have anecdotal information suggesting anywhere from a few dozen to a few hundred of them are missing, but we really don't know, " an immigration official told CNN.
Bryan Routledge, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business in Pittsburgh, cautioned that the Beige Book contains anecdotal information about business trends, not hard numbers.
"The anecdotal information and the limited trials that we've seen clearly suggest that we have something very important here that we have not given full attention to, " says Prohaska.
BBC: Ageing well: Can dance and art keep the mind and body young?
His claim could result from an unfortunate reliance on anecdotal information or (as is more likely) a political strategy to gain support for tax increases from an unwitting public and media.
If bank lending is turning down, for example, anecdotal information is needed to help sort out whether the primary cause is reluctance to lend, a reduction in loan demand, or some combination of the two.
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