Data Do Not Imply Science

As a follow-up to my recent post on Big Data, I recommend today's post by Jeff Leek on the Simply Statistics blog. It's titled. 'The key word in "Data Science is not Data, it is Science'.

Jeff says:

"Most people hyping data  science have focused on the first word: data. They care about volume and velocity and whatever other buzzwords describe data that is too big for you to analyze in Excel. .........

But the key word in data science is not "data"; it is "science". Data science is only useful when the data are used to answer a question. That is the science part of the equation. The problem with this view of data science is that it is much harder than the view that focuses on data size or tools. It is much, much easier to calculate the size of a data set and say "My data are bigger than yours"......"

Right on, Jeff!

© 2013, David E. Giles