The fashionable term now is “Big Data.”
IBM estimates that we are generating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day, more than 90 percent of which was created in the last two years.
(A)Data-driven predictions can succeed―and they can fail.
It is when we deny our role in the process that the odds of failure rise.
Before we demand more of our data, we need to demand more of ourselves.
(B)This rapid growth in information is sometimes seen as a cure-all, as computers were in the 1970s.
Some experts say that the overwhelming volume of data would remove the need for theory, and even the scientific method.
(C)But this view is incorrect.
The numbers have no way of speaking for themselves.
We fill them with meaning.
We may interpret them in self-serving ways that are detached from their objective reality.