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Data Quotes

Browse 1411 quotes about Data.

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Data Quotes

“All research in the cultural sciences in an age of specialization, once it is oriented towards a given subject matter through particular settings of problems and has established its methodological principles, will consider the analysis of the data as an end in itself.”

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Book:On the Methodology of the Social Sciences
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“Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.”

IfsGivingMindBelieveIdeasSchoolBeliefScientistPreparedDataExecutivesGraduatesNew IdeasBusiness School
Book:Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas
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“The great temptation of Big Data is that we can stop worrying about comprehension and focus on preventive action instead. Instead of wasting precious public resources on understanding the 'why' - i.e., exploring the reasons as to why terrorists become terrorists - one can focus on predicting the 'when' so that a timely intervention could be made.”

MadeReasonBigsActionUnderstandingWorryFocusResourcesTerroristTemptationDataExploringInterventionComprehensionStop WorryingPredictingTimely
Author:Evgeny Morozov
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“All knowledge that is about human society, and not about the natural world, is historical knowledge, and therefore rests upon judgment and interpretation. This is not to say that facts or data are nonexistent, but that facts get their importance from what is made of them in interpretation… for interpretations depend very much on who the interpreter is, who he or she is addressing, what his or her purpose is, at what historical moment the interpretation takes place.”

WorldHumansMadeMomentsFactsPurposeNaturalDependsJudgmentImportanceHistoricalDataInterpretationNatural WorldHuman SocietyInterpreterHistorical Knowledge
Book:Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World
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“This is the most important thing I will ever say to you. The human mind is the ultimate testing device. You can take all the notes you want on the technical data, anything you forget you can look up again, but this must be engraved on your hearts in letters of fire. There is nothing, nothing, nothing, more important to me in the men and women I train than their absolute personal integrity. Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool metal. That’s all.”

MenWantMindHumansLooksHeartMayImportantLawLyingForgetFireFoolIntegrityMen And WomenLettersUltimateFunctionAbsolutesImportant ThingsTrainNotesPhysicsDataLook UpDevicesHuman MindMetalsTestingForget YouLaws Of PhysicsInspectorsEngravedPersonal Integrity
Author:Lois McMaster Bujold
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“I mean what they and their hired psychiatrists call delusional systems. Needless to say, ‘delusions’ are always officially defined. We do not have to worry about questions of real or unreal. They only talk out of expediency. It’s the system that matters. How the data arrange themselves inside it. Some are consistent, others fall apart.”

MeanRealMatterFallWorryDefinedDataConsistentDelusionFalling ApartPsychiatristUnrealDelusionalExpediency
Author:Thomas Pynchon
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“Education is not the piling on of learning, information, data, facts, skills, or abilities--that's training or instruction--but is rather a making visible what is hidden as a seed... To be educated, a person doesn't have to know much or be informed, but he or she does have to have been exposed vulnerably to the transformative events of an engaged human life... One of the greatest problems of our time is that many are schooled but few are educated.”

KnowsHumansPersonsDoeHas BeensFactsProblemAbilityEducationEventsInformationSkillsTrainingSeedsEducatedDataHuman LifeEngagedOur TimeVisibleExposedInstructionSchooled
Author:Thomas Moore
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“Depression is a lot like that: slowly, over the years, the data will accumulate in your heart and mind, a computer program for total negativity will build into your system, making life feel more and more unbearale. But you won't even notice it coming on, thinking that it is somehow normal, something about getter older, about turning eight or about turning twelve or turning fifteeen, and then one day you realize that your entire life is just awful, not worth living, a horror and a black blot on the white terrain of human existence. One morning you wake up afraid you are going to live.”

ThinkingFeelsYearsMindHumansHeartLife IsBlackRealizingWhiteExistenceMorningHorrorOne DayNormalComputerProgramWake UpEightAwfulDataTwelveNegativityHeart And MindWorth LivingHuman ExistenceTerrainProzac Nation
Author:Elizabeth Wurtzel
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“Home. Home was BAMA, the Sprawl, the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis. Program a map to display frequency of data exchange, every thousand megabytes a single pixel on a very large screen. Manhattan and Atlanta burn solid white. Then they start to pulse, the rate of traffic threatening to overload your simulation. Your map is about to go nova. Cool it down. Up your scale. Each pixel a million megabytes. At a hundred million megabytes per second, you begin to make out certain blocks in midtown Manhattan, outlines of hundred-year-old industrial parks ringing the old core of Atlanta.”

YearsHomeCertainWhiteMillionsThousandHundredProgramRateScreensCoreScalesBlockDataParksMapsDisplayTrafficThreateningBostonFrequencyPulseManhattanOutlinesAtlantaMake OutAxesSimulationOverloadMetropolitanHome HomeNovasPixels
Book:Neuromancer
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“Knowing is not simply a material act, since the object that is known always conceals something beyond the empirical datum. All our knowledge, even the most simple, is always a minor miracle, since it can never be fully explained by the material instruments that we apply to it. In every truth there is something more than we would have expected, in the love that we receive there is always an element that surprises us.”

SimpleKnownKnowingObjectsMaterialsElementsMiracleInstrumentsSurpriseExpectedDataMinors
Book:Charity in Truth
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“Real data is messy. ...It's all very noisy out there. Very hard to spot the tune. Like a piano in the next room, it's playing your song, but unfortunately it's out of whack, some of the strings are missing, and the pianist is tone deaf and drunk- I mean, the noise! Impossible!”

MeanRealHardSongNextRoomsImpossibleMissingNoiseDrunkSpotsDataPianoToneTunesStringsDeafMessyNoisyPianist
Book:Tom Stoppard Plays 5: The Real Thing; Night & Day; Hapgood; Indian Ink; Arcadia
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“Let's find and remedy all our weaknesses before our enemies get a chance to say a word. That is what Charles Darwin did. ...When Darwin completed the manuscript of his immortal book "The Origin Of Species" he realized that the publication of his revolutionary concept of creation would rock the intellectual and religious worlds. So he became his own critic and spent another 15 years checking his data, challenging his reasoning, and criticizing his conclusions.”

WorldYearsBookChallengesReligiousChanceEnemyRocksCreationIntellectualWeaknessConceptsSpeciesCriticsConclusionDataRevolutionaryReasoningImmortalCriticizeRemedyPublicationManuscriptsOrigin Of Species
Author:Dale Carnegie
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“The TV scientist who mutters sadly, "The experiment is a failure; we have failed to achieve what we had hoped for," is suffering mainly from a bad script writer. An experiment is never a failure solely because it fails to achieve predicted results. An experiment is a failure only when it also fails adequately to test the hypothesis in question, when the data it produces don't prove anything one way or another.”

WaySufferingResultsFailingAchieveProduceTvsProveTestsScientistScriptsExperimentsOne WayDataHypothesis
Author:Robert M. Pirsig
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“Elsewhere the paper notes that vegetarians and vegans (including athletes) 'meet and exceed requirements' for protein. And, to render the whole we-should-worry-about-getting-enough-protein-and-therefore-eat-meat idea even more useless, other data suggests that excess animal protein intake is linked with osteoporosis, kidney disease, calcium stones in the urinary tract, and some cancers. Despite some persistent confusion, it is clear that vegetarians and vegans tend to have more optimal protein consumption than omnivores.”

ShouldIdeasEnoughWholeAnimalWorryClearFoodDiseasePaperStonesNotesIncludingAthleteCancerConfusionDespiteDataUselessMeatVegetarianVeganExcessElsewhereConsumptionRequirementsLinkedPersistentExceedProteinKidneysOptimalEating AnimalsCalciumOsteoporosisMeat IndustryMeat ConsumptionKidney Disease
Author:Jonathan Safran Foer
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“No theory ever benefited by the application of data, Amy. Data kills theories. A theory has no better time than when it's lying there naked, pure, unsullied by facts. Let's just keep it that way for a while." "So you don't really have a theory?" "Clueless." "You lying bag of fish heads." "I can fire you, you know. Even if Clay was the one that hired you, I'm not totally superfluous to this operation yet. I'm kind of in charge. I can fire you. Then how will you live?" "I'm not getting paid." "See, right there. Perfectly good concept ruined by the application of fact.”

IfsKnowsWayKindI CanFactsLyingFireTheoryPureConceptsPaidFishesNakedDataOperationsBagsApplicationRuinedClaySuperfluousAmyCluelessPerfectly Good
Author:Christopher Moore
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“That as people age, accumulate more and more private experiences, their sense of history tightens, narrows, becomes more personal? So that to the extent that they remember events of social importance, they remember only for example 'where they were' when such-and-such occurred. Et cetera et cetera. Objective events and data become naturally more and more subjectively colored.”

PeopleAgeRememberSocialEventsExampleImportanceObjectivesData
Book:The Broom of the System: A Novel
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“The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself - not from sacred books or sectarian beliefs. Inferring that biochemical systems were designed by an intelligent agent is a humdrum process that requires no new principles of logic or science. It comes simply from the hard work that biochemistry has done over the past forty years, combined with consideration of the way in which we reach conclusions of design every day.”

WayYearsBookHardDonePastBeliefProcessPrinciplesDesignHard WorkFlowLogicIntelligentSacredConclusionAgentsDataConsiderationFortyOver The PastIntelligent DesignBiochemistryHumdrum
Author:Michael Behe
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“When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.”

PeopleIfsWorldLooksEarthOrderJusticeAnswersPoorGraceHavensThis WorldWillingDespairHappeningsOrdinaryOptimisticDataOddsOrdinary PeoplePulsePessimisticSemblance
Author:Paul Hawken
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“Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.”

ThinkingWayGivingFeelsPhilosophyFactsMovingLyingStuffInformationBrilliantDataTiesMelancholySociologyDon't ChangeSlippery
Book:Fahrenheit 451
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“My hair would continue to gray, and then one day, it would fall out entirely, and then, on a day meaninglessly close to the present one, meaninglessly like the present one, I would disappear from the earth. And all these emotions, all these yearnings, all these data, if that helps to clinch the enormity of what I'm talking about, would be gone. And that's what immortality means. It means selfishness. My generations belief that each one of us matters more than you or anyone else would think.”

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Book:Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel
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“Robots are important also. If I don my pure-scientist hat, I would say just send robots; I'll stay down here and get the data. But nobody's ever given a parade for a robot. Nobody's ever named a high school after a robot. So when I don my public-educator hat, I have to recognize the elements of exploration that excite people. It's not only the discoveries and the beautiful photos that come down from the heavens; it's the vicarious participation in discovery itself.”

PeopleIfsImportantSchoolBeautifulGivenHeavenPureElementsHigh SchoolDiscoveryScientistDataHatsExplorationParticipationRobotsEducatorParadesMind BlowingVicarious
Author:Neil deGrasse Tyson
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