EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

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SwissChap in reply to @frankenbike

Data is only meaningful in the context of some sort of entity interpreting it. At which point it transforms into an anecdote. "The scale says 200 g" "that's anecdotal mate"

Exactly that. Also, if I measure the weight of the contents of one bag of flour I bought in the supermarket and it comes out at 495g instead of the claimed 500g, that's a single observation and an anecdote that I can tell about the thieving companies. If I weigh a thousand bags of flour in a warehouse and the average comes out at 495g, that starts to become what people would call 'data'.

@itsbruce

The most witless statement I've seen in this thread for some time.

You're welcome to explain that. Just saying 'haha you're dumb' isn't very convincing.

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Oliver Schick in reply to @SwissChap

Just saying 'haha you're dumb' isn't very convincing.

Yeah, but if a thousand people say that, it starts to become 'data'. :)

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SwissChap in reply to @Oliver Schick

It does. I think the issue here is that people assume 'data' is immediately valuable or useful. It isn't necessarily (or even, usually) - data can contain all kinds of biases and errors and yet it's still 'data'.

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