Beautiful Data

Conclusion

It's no news that we live in an age of abundant data. Bits are cheap and loose. Evolutionary processes have equipped us to note jarring changes in the environment—the proverbial tiger or tsunami—to recognize faces and create narratives to aid memory. But we lack infrastructure to collect and sort massive and heterogeneous sets of data. What infrastructure we have must be carefully employed: we can begin to better use data by understanding both probabilities and the limits of probability, and by remaining careful of the cognitive biases that cloud interpretation.

Data in the eye of the beholder can be beautiful indeed.