Insight Generation Quotes

Why don't I talk about Big Data? Because I am focused on intelligent answers and not speeds and feeds. It doesn't matter if it is quick if it's the wrong answer.

Facts themselves do not give knowledge

A great deal of creativity is about pattern recognition, and what you need to discern patterns is tons of data. Your mind collects that data by taking note of random details and anomalies easily seen every day: quirks and changes that, eventually, add up to insights.

Go out and collect data and, instead of having the answer, just look at the data and see if the data tells you anything. When we're allowed to do this with companies, it's almost magical.

The best moments are when, together with... you bring information, you bring data to bear in a way that helps illuminate something that you just don't really understand. Even if it doesn't completely clarify it, it just, you know, helps bring it together.

Often when works at a hard question, nothing good is accomplished at the first attack. Then one takes a rest, long or short, and sits down anew to the work. During the first half-hour, as before, nothing is found, and then all of a sudden the decisive idea presents itself to the mind.

The idea is to go from numbers to information to understanding.

An idea or an insight doesn't come from a single happening, it requires a meeting to alter a perspective. Often it takes a while for the events to collide, but when they do it is inevitable that a change will follow.

The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.

Insights don't usually arrive at my desk, but go into notebooks when I'm on the move. Or half-asleep.

Analytics is not about sitting behind a computer and pushing enter and having it produce an answer.

The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known.

As soon as you externalize an idea you see facets of it that weren't clear when it was just floating around in your head.

By bringing together what we know and what we don't know through analogy, metaphorical thinking strikes the spark that ignites discovery.

I really like the mission at SurveyMonkey, which is, we help people make better decisions. It's just a great thing.

It's the knowledge derived from information that gives you a competitive edge.

Only after I've seen the visible can I imagine what the invisible is.

The very best [infographics] engender and facilitate an insight by visual means - allow us to grasp some relationship quickly and easily that otherwise would take many pages and illustrations and tables to convey. Insight seems to happen most often when data sets are crossed in the design of the piece - when we can quickly see the effects on something over time, for example, or view how factors like income, race, geography, or diet might affect other data. When that happens, there's an instant "Aha!".

The power of Ayasdi is its unique ability to automatically discover insights - regardless of complexity - without asking questions.

The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers.

Many people make the mistake of confusing information with knowledge. They are not the same thing. Knowledge involves the interpretation of information. Knowledge involves listening.

Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.

Contemplation is to knowledge what digestion is to food - the way to get life out of it

We know now data is so powerful, and you can learn so much about yourself and creating product with data.

The core advantage of data is that it tells you something about the world that you didn't know before.