The more data there is, "the more people can cherry pick" data points that confirm what they want it to show, he said.

Abundant data is a notable problem in politics, where many have an interest in the outcome. But it's also an issue in fields ranging from medicine - where many researchers and journals would rather see studies showing an interesting result than a confirmation of no news - to earthquake prediction.

It turns out that along with real insight, Big Data can bring "a lot of spurious correlations" - what appear to be relationships between things that are just random noise, Silver said.

Read Full Article


Keywords: supply chain management, supply chain solutions, supply chain management IT, misuse of analytics, skewed Big Data analysis