Comments on the philosophy of data
Claude Shannon, the inventor of Information Theory made a distinction between data and information: data was a fact, information was the basis of a decision. Data is not information until we put it in context. A red light is a fact, a red light over a street intersection is the basis for a decision and thus, information. We seem to believe that all data are equally valuable but data without context is useless. ralph varhaug
Democritus Jr Pacific Coast
I find distinctions between data and information problematic. It is easy to say a red light is data and a red light over an intersection is information because you can make a decision based on it, but that avoids the question of how data can transform into information. What constitutes the context for a decision? The gentleman who insists that hot streaks and learning styles have meaning takes his context from his experience. Mr. Brooks insistence on numbers includes statistics in his context. Nate Silverman's predictions could be an aberation-- statistics deals in probabilities, not certainties, and where there is probability, there is always the possibility of the unlikely. Nevertheless, if it is only unlikely that Schrodinger's cat is sitting on my keyboard as I type, I believe I have anecdotal evidence for the statistical approach.