Data: A Hoarder’s Storage Locker, Not a Magical Museum
<p>There’s a common misconception that data is the next best thing to a holy relic of science — objective, mathematical, clean, correct, and above all, always useful.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A more accurate analogy for data would be a hoarder’s storage locker.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If you’re like most people, you envision data as a magical museum, meticulously organized and filled with diamonds and other gems, so brace yourself for a reality check!</p>
<p>A more accurate analogy for data would be a hoarder’s storage locker, filled to the brim with all kinds of stuff. If you’re willing to go spelunking into the mess you’ve inherited, you might find something valuable in there, but brace yourself for a pile of broken garbage that only its hoarder could love. (That is, if that hoarder even remembers what on earth they squirreled away in all that mess.)</p>
<p><img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/0*tvgxeGnNg15T68K9" style="height:392px; width:700px" /></p>
<p>Image is property of the author.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Most datasets come with about as much documentation as your sink of dirty dishes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://bit.ly/quaesita_gigo" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Data documentation</a> is simultaneously an unsolved research problem — it’s not obvious how to design docs optimally for transparency and effective data sharing — and an annoying chore for the data hoarding enthusiast (since you’d keep fewer objects if you had to document them all at archival quality).</p>
<p><a href="https://kozyrkov.medium.com/data-a-hoarders-storage-locker-not-a-magical-museum-a67703f2c7da">Click Here</a></p>