Category: Data

Data, Decisions, Learning, questions

Too many dots

marcusdegerman

“Too many dots,” Miller said. “Not enough lines.”

James S. A. Corey, Leviathan Wakes

The last few years we have been given more and more data. Data-driven decisions is a buzzword in many businesses and people seem to trust you more if you say that you based your decisions on data. The challenge is that the more data we get, the harder it is to analyse. You need more time and more skill if you want to analyze large datasets, and it becomes easier and easier to make an error and come up with a wrong conclusion.

If you learn some basic data visualization techniques, then you will get far. And please stop calculating the average of all the data you get; most people have no idea what it means nor how dangerous that measure is.

Instead focus on a few dots, visualise it, and then try to draw some lines. Or try go talking to people…

Complexity, Data, Decisions

Facts are not enough

marcusdegerman

“She had seen her home distilled into a sterile list of facts. Each was individually true, but the list conveyed nothing of what it sounded like when a flock of ravens wheeled into the sky…”

–Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

Many people wants to make decisions just based on facts, believing that they are objective and rational human beings. Even if you create the most objective and rational decision making process. A subjective human being has created the process and chosen the facts to look at.

The other problem with just looking at data points is that you miss the context they are created in. Data points can’t be interpreted without connections and stories. And stories without data can be unreliable.

This is the difference between Big data and Thick data: Big data, gives us a lot of data and facts. Thick data will instead gives us the context and the stories. Both are needed.