Quotes About Data

The likes of Google and Target are no more keen to share their datasets and algorithms than Newton was to share his alchemical experiments. Sometimes

The counterintuitive result is that presenting people with a detailed and balanced account of both sides of the argument may actually push people away from the center rather than pull them in. If we already have strong opinions, then we'll seize upon welcome evidence, but we'll find opposing data or arguments irritating. This biased assimilation of new evidence means that the more we know, the more partisan we're able to be on a fraught issue.

One of the key lessons of the Web 2.0 era is this: Users add value. But only a small percentage of users will go to the trouble of adding value to your application via explicit means. Therefore, Web 2.0 companies set inclusive defaults for aggregating user data and building value as a side-effect of ordinary use of the application. As noted above, they build systems that get better the more people use them.

If measures are taken only at the micro level, analyzing the data at the micro level is a correct way to proceed, as long as one takes into account that observations within a macro-unit may be correlated. In

Huge volumes of data may be compelling at first glance, but without an interpretive structure they are meaningless.

good data organized effectively was the most important commodity for any analyst.

Yeah, have a couple cases of beer sent out," Commander Wood replied. It was the current joke between P-3C and submarine crews. "Thanks for the data. We'll take it from here. Out." Overhead, the Lockheed Orion increased power and turned southwest. The crewmen aboard would each hoist an extra beer or two at dinner, saying it was for their friends on the submarine.

Let us, rather, gather facts, all the facts, regardless of aesthetic appeal or theoretical social worth, and spread those facts before us not as the soothsayer spreads the innards of a turkey but as a newspaper spreads its columns. Let us be journalists, then. And like all good journalists, we shall present our facts in an order that will satisfy the famous five W's: wow, whoopee, wahoo, why-not and whew.

Real data is messy. ...It's all very noisy out there. Very hard to spot the tune. Like a piano in the next room, it's playing your song, but unfortunately it's out of whack, some of the strings are missing, and the pianist is tone deaf and drunk- I mean, the noise! Impossible!

The intellectual case for planning was never very strong. Keynes, as we have seen, regarded economic planning much as he did pure market theory: in order to succeed, both required impossibly perfect data.

The little brain in the gut develops from the same embryonic tissue as the brain in the head, and the two are connected via the massive vagus nerve. Most intriguingly, there is a nine-to-one rate of data transfer from the gut to the brain, as opposed to the brain to the gut.

Byte or Get Bitten

Consumers say they don't want to be tracked, but in fact they keep feeding the machine with their data, because they want to claim their benefits. This

Massive tracking and total surveillance is here to stay.

Metadata is the new wealth

The web is hyperlinked documents; the cloud is hyperlinked data.

The human brain has a mechanism for dealing with data overload. It forgets. If indeed we're on a path to building machines that think like us, how ironic if the next great invention in computer memory turns out to be forgetting.

Like conventional weapons, most digital weapons have two parts—the missile, or delivery system, responsible for spreading the malicious payload and installing it onto machines, and the payload itself, which performs the actual attack, such as stealing data or doing other things to infected machines. In this case, the payload was the malicious code that targeted the Siemens software and PLCs.

the cost of storing information is approaching zero (storing 1GB costs an average of less than $0.03 a year today, compared to more than $10,000 20 years ago).

An estimated 90% of the world's data has been created in the past two years, and the amount of information created by businesses is doubling every 1.2 years.

We will see how contact tracing has an unequalled capacity and a quasi-essential place in the armoury needed to combat COVID-19, while at the same time being positioned to become an enabler of mass surveillance.

It is right to look for someone's "real" intentions after his ostensible intentions have been shown to be incompatible with the actual data of his situation and behaviour. But simply disregarding his explicit reasons so as to impose your own alternative explanation without giving him a fair hearing is not acceptable.

I need debate and dialogue with others to test my own thinking and to make a decision. I test others' convictions or opinions by pushing on their arguments and seeing how strongly they will defend them. When challenged, do people shrink away from their own views, or do they stand behind them? When pressed, do people offer more data to support their position, or do they simply repeat the same things in a louder voice?

Believe me, if it can be digitized, it will be.