Five years ago—in February 2012—an article in the New York Times’ Sunday Review heralded the arrival of a new epoch in human affairs: “The Age of Big Data.” Society was embarking on a revolution, the article informed us, one in which the collection and analysis of enormous quantities of data would transform almost every facet of life.

No longer would data analysis be confined to spreadsheets and regressions: The advent of supercomputing, combined with the proliferation of internet-connected sensors that could record data constantly and send it to the cloud, meant that the sort ­of advanced statistical analysis described in Michael Lewis’ 2003 baseball book Moneyball could be applied to fields ranging from business to academia to medicine to romance.

Source: slate.com
Author: Will Oremus