Stephen Few on Big Data Reality

A lengthy and thoughtful piece by visualization expert Stephen Few.  He concludes and makes some excellent points .  People still make most data based decisions in context:

" ... I make my living helping people understand and communicate information derived from data, so Big Data has produced a greater appreciation for my work. Here’s the rub: Big Data, as a term with no clear definition, which serves as a marketing campaign for technology vendors, encourages people to put their faith in technologies without first developing the skills that are needed to use those technologies. As a result, organizations waste their money and time chasing the latest so-called Big Data technologies—some useful, some not—to no effect because technologies can only augment the analytical abilities of humans; they cannot make up for our lack of skills or entirely replace our skills. Data is indeed a valuable resource, but only if we develop the skills to make sense of it and find within the vast and exponentially growing noise those relatively few signals that actually matter. Big Data doesn’t do this, people do—people who have taken the time to learn. ... "