As we delve into the depths and try to unleash the potential of information and technology the things that come into light are magnanimous and it will startle us as well. I am starting an humble attempt to share the details I observe as a witness for the benefit of all.
Data has various definitions and the one which is found in Wikipedia is as “Data are characteristics or information, usually numerical, that are collected through observation. In a more technical sense, data is a set of values of qualitative or quantitative variables about one or more persons or objects, while a datum (singular of data) is a single value of a single variable.”. The recent saying which we may hear quite common among the data enthusiasts is, Clive Humby’s statement that “Data is the New OIL”. But I would say it is more than that. The growth and success of startups to billion dollar corporations like Google, Facebook, Twitter are few examples to substantiate the statement.
The importance of data was noticed by eminent in early days as well for various use cases. Sherlock Holmes said, “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”. This itself is an example of Arthur Conan Doyle’s affirmation on the importance of data. Ronal Coase once told “Torture the data, and it will confess to anything.”. This is very true the more you churn the data the insights you derive is more powerful than anything currently available in the world.
The recent study by Harvard on COVID 19 put forth the inference that the presence of Virus in Wuhan can be stated as early as August 2019 and not December 2019. The data elements that substantiate their finding are
- Analysis of satellite images of parking lots in Wuhan hospitals shows that there is a surge in hospital traffic (an upward trend) from August 2019.
- The increase in the search pattern on the internet for “Cough”and “Diarrhea”. Cough can be tagged as seasonal diseases especially at that point in time but the combination with Diarrhea makes it lethal. The combination is a COVID 19 symptom which cannot be discarded.
This is enough to understand the power and the various faces data can turn into. We will look into more details in the next post.