Brian Kernighan Quotes

It's amazing how much data is out there. The question is how do we put it in a form that's usable?

There's a lot of power in executing data - generating data and executing data.

I think we are definitely suffering from an information overload, but I believe that there is going to be better and better ways of organizing that information and processing it so that it will enhance your daily life.

The numbers are hard to control.

If you're working with a spreadsheet or a thread of correspondence or a set of data, I'm not sure you're doing your best work if you're doing it on an iPhone.

Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.

Big data is indeed a buzzword but it is one that is frankly under-hyped.

There's a tendency in graphics to allow the trimming of certain parts. But I think that if you're open about your process, your methodology, such as introducing thresholds, introducing filters, techniques people use in research and data management, it's legitimate. It's legitimate to say, "We're only going to show data above this level, or between levels."

Data really powers everything that we do.

Every company has messy data, and even the best of AI companies are not fully satisfied with their data. If you have data, it is probably a good idea to get an AI team to have a look at it and give feedback. This can develop into a positive feedback loop for both the IT and AI teams in any company.

We need a new generation of executives who understand how to manage and lead through data. And we also need a new generation of employees who are able to help us organize and structure our businesses around that data.

Everything is changing now that we are in the cloud in terms of sharing our data, understanding our data using new techniques like machine learning.

I'm going to say something rather controversial. Big data, as people understand it today, is just a bigger version of small data. Fundamentally, what we're doing with data has not changed; there's just more of it.

My job is to analyze our data set to understand it and build products on it. I look at raw data, do the math to clean it up, and build systems to make it easy to understand.

I don't think we should have less information in the world. The information age has yielded great advances in medicine, agriculture, transportation and many other fields. But the problem is twofold. One, we are assaulted with more information than any one of us can handle. Two, beyond the overload, too much information often leads to bad decisions.

Data is cost. It takes money to create data, store it, clean it, and throw resources at it to learn anything from it.

Keeping records enhances the pleasure of the search and the chance of finding order and meaning in these events.

Data without generalization is just gossip.

Computer science only indicates the retrospective omnipotence of our technologies. In other words, an infinite capacity to process data (but only data -- i.e. the already given) and in no sense a new vision. With that science, we are entering an era of exhaustivity, which is also an era of exhaustion.

What if instead of seeing a neighborhood that reminds you of the place you grew up in, you see your actual neighborhood? The data exists. The technology exists. It's just a matter of sourcing it and processing it in a compelling fashion.

Data is like garbage. You'd better know what you are going to do with it before you collect it.

The computer, being a mechanical moron, can handle only quantifiable data.

Over the next ten years, everything that has a cord is going to have data in it.

Still, it is an error to argue in front of your data. You find yourself insensibly twisting them round to fit your theories.

Data is just like crude. It’s valuable, but if unrefined it cannot really be used. It has to be changed into gas, plastic, chemicals, etc to create a valuable entity that drives profitable activity; so must data be broken down, analyzed for it to have value.