The DataMarket Blog collected some humorous and intriguing quotes about the importance of data and information. Here are some favorites:
• 11. Many have tried to describe the importance of data in industrial, or even agricultural terms
"Data are becoming the new raw material of business." – Craig Mundie, head of research and strategy, Microsoft
"Data is the new oil!" – Clive Humby, ANA Senior marketer’s summit, 2006 "Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine.” – Peter Sondergaard, senior vice president at Gartner
• 10. …others in terms of previous breakthroughs in IT
"Data is the Next Intel Inside" – Tim O’Reilly, What Is Web 2.0
• 9. The love of data visualization is not new
"There is a magic in graphs. The profile of a curve reveals in a flash a whole situation — the life history of an epidemic, a panic, or an era of prosperity. The curve informs the mind, awakens the imagination, convinces." – Henry D. Hubbard, 1939
• 8. First we have data…
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data." – Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlett (Arthur Conan Doyle)
• 7. …the rest is built on top
"You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data." – Daniel Keys Moran
• 6. He may not have always played by the book, but he knew what was needed to get the job done
"The most valuable commodity I know of is information." – Gordon Gekko, Wall Street (1987)
• 5. A reminder to be careful in your analysis and don’t stretch to get the results you’d like
"Torture the data, and it will confess to anything." – Ronald Coase, Economics, Nobel Prize Laureate
• 4. People take good care of data that is important to them
"Data that is loved tends to survive." – Kurt Bollacker, Data Scientist, Freebase/Infochimps
• 3. …and – as most good things – it just improves with age
"Data matures like wine, applications like fish." – James Governor
• 2. What use are statistics any way?
"In times like these when unemployment rates are up to 13%, income has fallen by 5% and suicide rates are climbing I get so angry that the government is wasting money on things like collection of statistics!" – From Hans Rosling’s The Joy of Stats
• 1. Finally, my very favorite data quote (and principle in life)
"If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine." – Jim Barksdale, former Netscape CEO
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