Information Age Lacks "the 411"

Posted from Akron, Ohio-

I love my job.  I learn so much from my audience members.  They always bring me their best and often, there is a pearl of wisdom in the crowd.

Today's brilliance is courtesy of Dr. Heesoo Kim, a very smart man at one of Ohio's most successful health insurance providers.  Heesoo's job is to analyze data and make sense of the various patterns and non-patterns.  The goal is use such information to make better business decisions and offer better products and services.  But having tons of data isn't the most serious challenge.

Kim says, "We have a lot of data, but sometimes not much information."

I think this is profound.  Data is factual information (as measurements or statistics) used as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation <the data is plentiful and easily available — H. A. Gleason, Jr.> <comprehensive data on economic growth have been published — N. H. Jacoby> 2 : information output by a sensing device or organ that includes both useful and irrelevant or redundant information and must be processed to be meaningful                           , but information is  the communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence2 a (1): knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction