DATA YOU CAN COUNT ON

Now you have heard me say “NUMBERS NEVER LIE BECAUSE-THEY DON’T TALK”. Some smart guy from HARVARD wrote a book, THE HALF-LIFE OF FACTS, saying just that. I haven’t read the book. I’d like too because I bet it’s about how do we know what we know.

My curiosity about the subject started back in FRESHMAN CHEMISTRY at West Virginia WESLEYAN COLLEGE. We studied at the time the HIESENBERG UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE if I remember right (If I don’t-tough I am not going to go back and look it up) which stated that positive particles attracted negative ones just until they got minutely close and then they actually repelled each other. To me. this principle was an admission that we don’t really know what we are talking about.

Fast forward twenty-some years and I was sitting in the audience at a lecture at the MUSEUM OF SCIENCE in BOSTON and listening to a discussion about NANOMOLECULES which are SUBATOMIC particles. What I hear is that there is this mystical mystery about how things behave at this level and the first step in understanding has been to admit we don’t understand and open ourselves up to learning.

DATA can be a good thing. I mean without it we couldn’t have BATTING AVERAGES but over reliance on it can lead you to a self-fulfilling distortion. It can give you answers where there are no answers, like who is the better HOME RUN HITTER – BARRY BONDS or BABE RUTH?

 JESSE LEFKOWITZ FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE

Big data: Mind the gaps