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Data in the Post-Viral World
“may you live in interesting times”
The earth turns, and suddenly everything’s closed. Perhaps you still have to commute, maybe you get some more time at home to examine your life. I don’t aim to understate the severity of a dangerous virus; thousands have died, and odds are many more will follow (pursuant to measures taken).
Yet we still find ourselves looking forward to the future and how it can be improved: it is terribly human to search for the positive in uncertain crisis.
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I work with data of all sorts (I’m fond of faces and graphs). In response to the growing pandemic, there’s been a tremendous rush of activity from data scientists around the world. Most of it is quite helpful, though some of it may be less so. There’s a very valid argument to be made regarding the signal:noise ratio of a sudden flood of insights (generated with less-than-accurate data) hampering public perception of reality.
But on the whole, I still believe in the spirit of analysis as a valid response to problems on a scale the human brain isn’t designed to perceive. Data science is a fine way of discovering odd, useful…
