Going Gaga Over Raw Data

Big Data

I have seen a lot of IT companies advertising services to do with big data. Being a Layman, I often have no idea what they are talking about, but it sounds really cool. My little research efforts have yielded an inkling about what is happening. It turns out that many professionals, both individuals and organisations, have been collecting data that is meant to help them gather useful information about what they are doing. Unfortunately for these people, data does not necessarily readily provide information. It has to be carefully analysed and interpreted before it can be of any use in decision making.

A New Form of Laziness

It has become fashionable for Kenyans to spew all sorts of statistics when they are telling stories of what they have witnessed. It is seen as some kind of authentication when an otherwise far-fetched story is accompanied by numbers. Everybody agrees with the saying that ‘numbers don’t lie’. While it is true that figures give a story more substance, they don’t replace the need for creative storytelling and the interjection of beautiful prose. It is this flashing around of ‘facts and figures’ that has given rise to a new form of laziness. People no longer want to package the information in an easy-to-understand form. They can just throw in a caption-less picture and bar graphs on their social media pages. Nobody will read these pages but the authors will go home convinced that theirs will be the next ‘viral’ post.

Actuarial Uprising

A few years ago, I heard that there were less than 20 actuarial experts in the country. For the Laymen and Women, rest assured, I have not gone berserk. Actuarial science is not a Greek term. It refers to a field of mathematics (or science, I’m not sure) dealing with measuring and managing risk. The growth in this field has corresponded with a similar growth in the areas of betting and other forms of gambling. Insurance has also become a major industry. The people involved in both insurance and betting rely heavily on information provided by actuarial experts. This is not so for the thousands who consume these services. These just do it blindly and the only ‘evidence’ they claim to have is the handful of winners who have walked away with millions. There is a new breed of ‘expert’ who claims to be able to help players place winning bets. They say they have analysed mountains of data just to help you win. Whether or not that is true remains to be seen.

Vehicle Fuel Consumption

Like I have said before, I am not a complete Layman when it comes to the field of Automotive Engineering. I therefore found it funny when some years back I listened to the then Finance Minister (who is the President today) give a directive on the maximum engine capacity vehicles bought by the government must have. He declared that government vehicles must not have an engine capacity higher than 1800cc. For the Laypeople among you, cc denotes internal engine volume in Cubic Centimetres. All the big-engined ‘guzzlers’ were auctioned off in a fashion that I don’t want to get into right now.

The reasoning by the government then was based on an assumption that the higher the engine capacity, the higher the fuel consumption; and vice versa. While this may have been true two decades ago, it is no longer entirely accurate. Ground-breaking technology has made engine capacity almost irrelevant in the determination of rate of fuel consumption in a vehicle. So much extra data has to be analysed before an accurate figure of consumption can be derived. Other conclusions do not help much besides creating unnecessary sensation.

Conclusion of the Matter

What is the Layman rambling on about? You might ask. The only demand I am making, ‘uncategorically’, is that we all purpose to base our conclusions over different matters on accurate information that has been analysed and interpreted by knowledgeable persons. Let us avoid going all ‘Gaga’ over raw data!