The Joy of Data
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Ok, I stole the title of this piece from the BBC4 TV programme of the same name first broadcast on Wednesday 20 July 2016.
As one of the speakers said, “the proper use of data reduces uncertainty” and that just about sums it all up. Smart people use data to get things right.
Far from being the modern fashion that phrases like ‘Big Data’ might have us believe it was the Victorian statistician William Farr who got things going with his in-depth analysis of the London population census and its application to working out how cholera epidemics started (it was the water supply). Later, the detailed proceedings criminal trials at the Old Bailey (1674-1913) provided data from which, for example. word searches showed how cases moved over time from being about property to being about offences against people.
So, data provides information which leads to wisdom, according to the programme.
In 1948, Claude Sherman, working at Bell Laboratories in the US, came up with the binary system and then things really took off. Lyons Tea shops, in the UK, in the 1950’s used Sherman’s work to simplify and streamline the business operations of their vast network of outlets. So it goes until now when data, its analysis and proper application, is ubiquitous. The weight of data available, used correctly, shows that even the strongest held beliefs can be overcome.
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