Big Data Quotes of the Week

“Data is the new science. Big Data holds the answers. Are you asking the right questions?”—Pat Gelsinger, EMC

“You have to realize something about the three of us–we’re all big gamers. And we’re analytical. And competitive. We play those really complicated strategy board games that are supposed to take an hour or two to finish. They take us four or five hours. We just can’t help thinking through every possible move, every possible outcome and side-effect of those moves, and how best to take advantage of a given situation”–Dan Kador, CTO, Keen (on raising venture capital with co-founders Kyle Wild and Ryan Spraetz)

Being a statistician means never having to say you’re sure–Mike Parker ?@Sysparatem   

“When standard server system disk drives were 90MB (Yes, megabytes), ‘big data’ was in the gigabyte range. It was no less cumbersome in 1987 than it is now… We didn’t call it that. We called it ‘a lot of data.’ I think we might have interjected at least one expletive into the sentence for emphasis but it was big data.”–Ken Hess, ZDNet

“To take advantage of big data requires a shift, a very basic shift in some organizations, to actually trusting data and actually going where the data leads you. Big data is about looking forward, making predictions and taking action”—Jeff Kelly, Wikibon

“Everybody is freaked out to the degree to which these [big data] technologies intervene in our lives in one way or another. But everybody wants to target better. As more and more commerce moves online, these are new prospecting mechanisms for a new age. The more efficient we get, the more targeted we get, the better we do. If you’re not in this game today, you better get in it now because your competitor will be soon.”—Merv Adrian, Gartner