0 Comments An Iconic Image for Indian Cricket

This was a common pose for Indian batsmen on bouncy pitches. A couple of days ago, it was one of the finest all-rounder of all time from South Africa. Indian cricket has indeed come a long way…


Jacques Kallis was the first batsman to fall on the fourth day as South Africa lost the Durban Test by 87 runs. The image is iconic especially if you view it in the context of the history of Indian defeats on foreign soil. Watch the video to get an even better idea…Well done Team India.

India Vs South Africa Test Series - 2nd Test. Kallis Wicket

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0 Comments IWMI-Tata Blog is now live!

The IWMI-Tata Program blog recently went online. Check it out here. The blog has been created with the objective of widely sharing the 2012 series of IWMI-Tata Highlights and Comments.

ITP Highlights and Comments pre-publications discussion papers developed primarily as the basis for discussion during the Annual Partners' Meet. In the run-up to the forthcoming Annual Partners’ Meet at the Institute of Rural Management Anand (28th-30th Nov), ITP will post more than 30 such discussion papers, 8 of which are already online.

Please visit the ITP blog for regular updates on new material posted. You can also subscribe to the blog by registering your email address on the blog or by sending an email to iwmitata@gmail.com.

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0 Comments Perils of Publishing…

This is so brilliant, I have nothing to add… Enjoy!

Journal Manuscript Resubmissions

by Roy F. Baumeister

Dear Sir, Madame, or Other:
Enclosed is our latest version of Ms # 85-02-22-RRRRR, that is, the re-re-re-revised revision of our paper. Choke on it. We have again rewritten the entire manuscript from start to finish. We even changed the goddamn running head! Hopefully we have suffered enough by now to satisfy even you and your bloodthirsty reviewers.
I shall skip the usual point-by-point description of every single change we made in response to the critiques. After all, it is fairly clear that your reviewers are less interested in details of scientific procedure than in working out their personality problems and sexual frustrations by seeking some kind of demented glee in the sadistic and arbitrary exercise of tyrannical power over helpless authors like ourselves who happen to fall into their clutches. We do understand that, in view of the misanthropic psychopaths you have on your editorial board, you need to keep sending them papers, for if they weren't reviewing manuscripts they'd probably be out mugging old ladies or clubbing baby seals to death. Still, from this batch of reviewers, C was clearly the most hostile, and we request that you not ask him or her to review this revision. Indeed, we have mailed letter bombs to four or five people we suspected of being reviewer C, so if you send the manuscript back to them the review process could be unduly delayed.
Some of the reviewers' comments we couldn't do anything about. For example, if (as review C suggested) several of my recent ancestors were indeed drawn from other species, it is too late to change that. Other suggestions were implemented, however, and the paper has improved and benefited. Thus, you suggested that we shorten the manuscript by 5 pages, and we were able to accomplish this very effectively by altering the margins and printing the paper in a different font with a smaller typeface. We agree with you that the paper is much better this way.
One perplexing problem was dealing with suggestions #13-28 by Reviewer B. As you may recall (that is, if you even bother reading the reviews before doing your decision letter), that reviewer listed 16 works that he/she felt we should cite in this paper. These were on a variety of different topics, none of which had any relevance to our work that we could see. Indeed, one was an essay on the Spanish-American War from a high school literary magazine. The only common thread was that all 16 were by the same author, presumably someone whom Reviewer B greatly admires and feels should be more widely cited. To handle this, we have modified the Introduction and added, after the review of relevant literature, a subsection entitled "Review of Irrelevant Literature" that discusses these articles and also duly addresses some of the more asinine suggestions in the other reviews.
We hope that you will be pleased with this revision and will finally recognize how urgently deserving of publication this work is. If not, then you are an unscrupulous, depraved monster with no shred of human decency. You ought to be in a cage. May whatever heritage you come from be the butt of the next round of ethnic jokes. If you do accept it, however, we wish to thank you for your patience and wisdom throughout this process and to express our appreciation of your scholarly insights. To repay you, we would be happy to review some manuscripts for you; please send us the next manuscript that any of these reviewers submits to your journal.
Assuming you accept this paper, we would also like to add a footnote acknowledging your help with this manuscript and to point out that we liked the paper much better the way we originally wrote it but you held the editorial shotgun to our heads and forced us to chop, reshuffle, restate, hedge, expand, shorten, and in general convert a meaty paper into stir-fried vegetables. We couldn't, or wouldn't, have done it without your input.
Sincerely,

Source: http://astro.berkeley.edu/~mwhite/referee_funny.html

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0 Comments Google acquires BlindType

Touch typing on a small keyboard is a pain, period. This is one of the things I am afraid about. When I give up my HTC TouchDual and move to Desire, I will no longer be able to type with my Stylus (which is not easy, but easier than finger typing). But now, it seems, I might have reasons to be happy.

Google has recently acquired BlindType, an impressive new technology that recognizes the location of your fingers on the screen to accurately predict the text you want to type.

BlindType has been acquired by Google!

by BlindType team on 10/01/10

We are excited to announce that BlindType has been acquired by Google!

We want to thank everyone for their overwhelming support and positive feedback. We know that typing on your mobile device can be a frustrating experience, which is why we've worked hard to make touch typing easier and faster than ever - the way it should be.

We're excited to join Google, and look forward to the great opportunities for mobile innovation that lie ahead.

The BlindType team

You no longer have to worry about hitting the exact keys on your small touch phone keyboard. You can type anywhere on the screen as if there was a keyboard underneath and the application will figure out what you mean. You don't even have to worry about the size (scale) of your keyboard, or its orientation (see picture).  We can expect this to be available on an Android phone soon.

View the video demo…

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0 Comments Quote of the Day…(Dalai Lama)

Someone once asked the Dalai Lama

What surprises you most about humanity?

He replied

Men....because:

• They loose their health to earn money, then they lose that money to stay healthy;
• They think anxiously about the future and forget the present...so they neither enjoy the present nor the future;
• They live as if they are never going to die and die realizing that they never really lived!
  

The last one really hits you, doesn't it?

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0 Comments Lose a bet, win a job!

Apparently, Feross Aboukhadijeh, a Stanford Computer Science student, made a bet with his roommate, after Google Instant was launched, that he could create YouTube Instant in less than an hour.

Well, he lost the bet but before we went to sleep that night, he did finish YouTube Instant and posted an update on Facebook. He is now a celebrity and has been offered a job by YouTube CEO Chad Hurley on Twitter!
Courtesy: http://www.feross.org/

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0 Comments HTC Desire vs. Samsung Galaxy S

I have finally decided to let go of my HTC Touch Dual after using it for 2 years. The experience has been mostly positive though I did have some problems with the touch screen and had to get a new one about 6 months ago. Anyway…

 

With so many new phones in the market, buying a phone can be laborious. For about 2 months now, I have been waiting for the launch of HTC Desire in India and now that it is finally available, I have a problem. At the Delhi airport recently, I could lay my hands on a Samsung Galaxy S and I have to say, I was impressed. More than anything else, by the 4-inch touch screen.
A difficult choice. I re-reviewed several reviews (!!) on Engadget, Gizmodo and numerous other TechLogs…you name it and I have probably been there. I laboriously scanned through thousands of comments from users and non-users on forums (e.g.. here). I even posted a status message on Facebook and tried to get more views. At the end, here is my summary for anyone who cares:

HTC Desire	Samsung Galaxy S
Pros Spandragon 1GHz 3.7” AMOLED Screen (Already updated to) FroYo (Android 2.2) Sturdy built quality 5 MP Camera, with Flash Excellent UI (HTC Sense)	Pros Hummingbird 1GHz 4” Super AMOLED Screen Swype 8GB/16GB + 512MB Dedicated Memory Superior Gaming Experience
Cons Inferior display in bright sunlight 576MB Shared Memory Poor battery life (expected to improve with FroYo)	Cons 5 MP Camera, No Flash Plastic body; low-cost iPhone feel TouchWiz UI, not even remotely as good as HTC Sense Eclair (Android 2.1), FroYo update expected Slightly more expensive

I was always leaning towards HTC Desire, given my positive experience with HTC over the last two years. And when they announced the FroYo update for Desire, the choice was made. What do you think?

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0 Comments iPads for Peace

I have a plan for the universe and it involves iPads, mobile phones and the new Almighty…the internet! There is a lot of talk of promoting religious tolerance in these times of crisis. Lets call this my little tribute to the anniversary of 9/11.

People say Muslims need to introspect and Islam needs to reform away from fundamentalism. Why only Islam, I think every religion needs a reform that will lead it in the direction of greater tolerance. Geert Wilders is not Muslim and hell he is unbearably intolerant. The same goes for Muthalik and his band of goons, Togadia et. al. But hey, I have a solution. Some might find it ridiculous, some might find it funny, but I am serious; I really think it can work!


So here is how you do it. Gift each and every religious leader in the world an iPad (or any other tablet); force them to install instant messengers of their choice and to add each other as friends; make them open an account on Facebook; have them join an online discussion forum. Simple? Well, that is almost all I am asking for. You do this and viola, in no time, you will find this world a better place to live.

Even if they just poke each other on FB, even if they just frequently buzz each other on messenger, even if they have serious and abusive fights on the discussion forums, I think it will help. 

Want to do it even better? Make all their interactions public and throw in a few infidels (non-believers) too. Let the world see what the Rabbi had to say to the Imam when they ran into each other online. Let the world know what was the first wall post from the Shankaracharya to the Pope. And of course, let the infidels comment on their actions…just for fun! :P

Give them cell phones too, it wont cost much. Let the world pay their internet and phone bills, as long as they talk to each other, not only amongst themselves. Let them preach, as long as they don't preach only to their blind followers but also to the non-believers; let them argue as long as they are also willing to listen and to answer any question from anyone.

Make them go out for a beer (oh well, at least a Chai) and force them to hang out at TGIF every Friday evening. No, stop laughing...I am serious! :)

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0 Comments Ramon Magsaysay Award for Deep Joshi

Deep Joshi, co-founder of PRADAN (Professional Assistance for Development Action), has been selected for the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award 2009.

for his vision and leadership in bringing professionalism to the NGO movement in India, by effectively combining ‘head’ and ‘heart’ in the transformative development of rural communities.

I think recognizing Deep’s efforts and more importantly, the exceptional approach adopted by PRADAN to “development” is simply wonderful. I have had the privilege of working with Deep when I was working for the IWMI-Tata Water Policy Program (ITP) in India and I have always admired him not just for his intellectual and professional qualities but also for his humility and approachability.

My first association with Deep was in 2003 via the Central India Initiative (CInI) – a collaborative action-research program – the seeds for which were sown by a concept note penned by Deep. CInI was one of the highlights of my work at ITP and the research results were published in the form of a book titled “Mainstreaming the Margins: Water-Centric Livelihood Strategies for Revitalizing Tribal Agriculture in Central India”. (Click here to read more about the book).

The research initiative ended in 2005 but it became the cornerstone of Sir Ratan Tata Trust’s ‘Rural Livelihoods and Communities’ portfolio. ITP hosted and incubated a dedicated CInI Cell, which is now working as an independent nodal agency for CInI projects in the tribal belt of central India.

In 2005, Deep was a member of the three-member team – along with Jacob Burke (FAO) and Ravi Chopra (People’s Science Institute) – that reviewed the work of the IWMI-Tata Water Policy Program. During an informal interaction with some of us, Deep and Ravi went down the memory lane and talked about their days as young students at MIT. I never imagined “evaluations” could be so much fun! Click here for the full evaluation report; and here’s an excerpt from the summary on CInI.

The research studies and reviews fashioned as Central India Initiative (CInI) have extended research into the water-livelihoods nexus (and more generally, the management of natural resources-livelihoods nexus) as it affects the tribal communities, largely ignored by policies and action. This presents an opportunity for breaking new ground in both conceptual and policy terms, affecting some of the poorest and socially most vulnerable people in the country and a large geographic region.

Anyway, a well deserved award for Deep and for PRADAN, and an excellent choice made by the Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation. Here’s the complete citation for Deep and the list of awardees.

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0 Comments Devotional Music for the “faith-free”

Even though I am not someone you would call “religious”, far from it, there is something terribly soothing about good devotional music that grabs my attention . It surprises me every time how much I like them despite my lack of “faith”. Here are some that I like… if you happen to like such songs as well, let me know about more and I will add them to this list.

Khwaja mere Khwaja – from the movie “Jodha Akbar”; music by A.R. Rahman

Hey Ram – this version sung by Jagjit Singh

Ek Onkar – from the movie “Rang De Basanti”

Arziyaan – from the movie “Delhi – 6”; music by A.R. Rahman

Bulla Ki Jaana – Rabbi Shergill

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0 Comments The Worst Job Ever…

I love this… Enjoy…

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0 Comments Google for Non-Profits…

Another Google innovation, a toolkit for Non-Profits with a simple yet catchy punch line, “You're changing the world. We want to help.”

Google for Non-Profits is a bundle of Google products and services that non-profit organizations around the world can use to enhance their “business” of development. The bundle includes: Google Grants (a non-profit version of Google Ad Words); Google Checkout (to collect online donations); Google Analytics (to understand how users interact with your website); Google Maps & Earth; YouTube; and Google Apps (GMail, Docs, Sites and Calendar). Click on the image links below for tutorials for non-profits.

Here’s a small video that provides a testimonial from a small non-profit organization about the impact of deploying the Google for Non-Profits bundle of products and services.

Unfortunately, some of these services are only available in the US but hopefully, Google is working towards extending these services to every corner of the world.

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0 Comments Googling into the future…

Yes, I admit… I am a Google fan! But then, who isn’t? Here’s a preview of their latest innovation – Google Voice.

 

I like to keep informed about how Google is going to (pleasantly) surprise me next and this new service is no exception. I haven't tried it, yet... but the concept seems brilliant. Incidentally, Google sent me an invite to sign up the beta for Google Voice but since I am not in the U.S., I was unable to do so. 

I can’t wait to have my own Google Number… and you?

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0 Comments Luck… probability taken personally!

14-year-old hit by 30,000 mph space meteorite

The Telegraph recently reported about Gerrit Blank, 14, who was struck by a meteorite on his way to school. A red hot, pea-sized piece of rock hit his hand before bouncing off and causing a foot wide crater in the ground. Gerrit survived the strike - the chances of which are just 1 in a million - but with a 3-inch scar on his hand.

At first I just saw a large ball of light, and then I suddenly felt a pain in my hand. Then a split second after that there was an enormous bang like a crash of thunder. The noise that came after the flash of light was so loud that my ears were ringing for hours afterwards. When it hit me it knocked me flying and then was still going fast enough to bury itself into the road.

Scientists have confirmed through chemical tests that the pea-sized rock is indeed a meteorite which crashed to Earth in Essen, Germany. According to Ansgar Kortem, director of Germany's Walter Hohmann Observatory, the meteorite is a rare collectors item since most meteorites evaporate in the atmosphere and 6 out of 7 that manage to get through land in water.

So here’s to Gerrit’s luck – a rare meteorite found his hand at 30,000 mph and he survived without any significant damage. Makes you wonder…about luck and the role it plays in our life, everyday!

Over the years, several people have tried to explain LUCK in their own way. A Rationalist might say, “Luck is probability taken personally” (quote: Chip Denman, Stats Lab, University of Maryland). Spiritual or religious leaders believe in the will of a supreme being or Divine Providence as affecting “luck” to different degrees. Western “New Age” reinterpretations of Karma cast it as luck associated with virtue. Hindu philosophy refers to Lakshmi as the original “Lady Luck”! Others like Freud have argued that a belief in luck is a way of escaping the responsibility of our actions.

Personally, I feel closest to the rationalist viewpoint but I’m not going into philosophical discussions here. But while we’re at it, here’s an excellent compilation on lucky streaks from YouTube. Enjoy…

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0 Comments Climate Change: Mumbo Jumbo or The Real Thing?

If you have always wondered about Climate Change and if you should be doing something about it, this is an interesting video, rather an interesting approach… even though I do not feel like jumping to the same conclusions. Worth a watch anyway…

Image Courtesy: http://ksjtracker.mit.edu/?p=2997

It’s funny, the speaker keeps claiming to talk about “Risk Management” but all he is really saying is that the worst CC scenario is NOT a risk we can afford to take – it’s just so huge. So even though he uses a novel style to put his point across, its precisely people like these who put me off all the CC mumbo-jumbo. Don’t say the world will end if you don’t act because that does NOT help me understand the real issues any better… and will NOT make me act! Explain to me the science, I consider myself to be intelligent and educated enough to understand it myself, so I don’t have to rely solely on the NSA or AAAS to make up my mind.

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0 Comments March of the Metaphorical Footprints…

Recently, I posted about the carbon footprint of Spam and it seems Carbon as a currency is gaining currency! What exactly is Carbon Footprint? Here’s how the UK Carbon Trust defines it:

the total set of GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions caused directly and indirectly by an individual, organization, event or product

Image Courtesy: British Recycled Products

You can calculate your own Carbon Footprint here. It requires some guesswork about your consumption habits but it will give you a general idea about where you stand vis-à-vis the rest of the planet.

Carbon is not the only metaphorical footprint that has become popular in recent years. In fact, its not even the first. I think the metamorphic footprints started in a big way with the Ecological Footprint  – a measure of human demand on the Earth's ecosystems. Then there’s the Water Footprint  – the total volume of freshwater that is used to produce the goods and services consumed by the individual or community or produced by the business. You can also find references to Social Footprint, usually in the context of Corporate Social Responsibility.

Anyway, coming back to the Carbon Footprint. I recent read about a new washing machine that claims to have a Carbon Footprint 40% lower than the most efficient alternative. How so? Well, it uses 90% less water and (therefore) significantly less electricity for drying the laundry. This “green gadget” from Xerox uses thousands of tiny nylon beads that have the characteristic of attracting and retaining dirt particles (now you know why nylon clothes get dirty very easily!) in conjunction with detergent and a little water. Read more here.

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0 Comments The Carbon Footprint of Spam…

We all know how irritating Spam can be. No matter what filters you use, there will always be some new spammer who find its way into your inbox. Have you ever wondered how much time and resources the world spends on creating and sending Spam and on preventing Spam from entering our mailboxes?

Image Courtesy: ICF/McAfee

According to the estimates of a recent report (PDF: 2.33 MB) by ICF International (commissioned by McAfee Inc.), approximately 62 trillion spam emails were sent out in 2008. The report estimates the global carbon footprint of these spam emails as well as the estimated savings by the use of spam filters.

Here are some key findings:

• Annual energy use on Spam – 33 Terawatt Hours (TWh) or 33 Billion KWh – equivalent to the energy consumption of 2.4 Million US homes.
• If this energy is assumed to be produced from coal-based power plants, the Green House Gases (GHG) emitted would equal the GHG emission of 3.1 Million passenger cars using 2 Billion US gallons of gasoline.
• The same gasoline could be used to drive around the planet 1.6 Million times.
• Spam filters annually save the planet 135 TWh of electricity – the impact equivalent to taking 13 million cars off the roads.
• For a typical medium-sized business (presumably, in the US), the annual energy consumption on emails is roughly 50,000 KWh – 20 percent of which can be attributed to Spam.

The Economist ran an article on the report (link requires subscription) and some of the reader comments are really interesting.

• What incentives do spammers have to send messages that can be easily filtered? One of the readers points out that even if 1 in 12.5 million messages leads to a real sale (of pills, for example), sending spam is worth the effort. Spammers not only make money from selling the pill but often much more by getting access to your financial information (credit card number) and its misuse. The fact that the marginal cost of generating and delivering spam to every additional person is so low (economies of scale?) makes it worthwhile.
• Another reader is very apologetic about his own comment when he quips, “I apologise for the CO₂ produced in my typing, and hence readers reading, this comment.”

Now, coming from McAfee Inc., these results are not very surprising. That Spam Filters save GHG emissions equivalent to removing more than 3 million cars is excellent news indeed – but to what effect? Spam is a “created paper tiger” that McAfee et al. shoot down and in the process make huge profits. Obviously, they are not doing this to “save the planet”. But then again, as Michael Douglas says in Wall Street, “Anything worth doing, is worth doing for money”.

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0 Comments The Unfriendly Greeting...

Are you an Indian (or South Asian, or for that matter, ANY Asian) living outside Asia? If yes, then I am sure you will connect with the post below.

Although this blog comes from CricInfo - a website about cricket, the post has got nothing to do with cricket. The author is a cricket journalist, currently in South Africa covering a popular cricket tournament. He is disturbed by the fact that he is greeted by "strangers" everywhere and is having a tough time reconciling with this custom. I absolutely enjoyed reading it and I hope you will too.

Read the full article here: Enough with the Friendliness

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0 Comments CouchSurfing: Seeing the World through the Eyes of Locals…

Cross-posted from NonSense – a PhD-To-PhD Newsletter

Image Courtesy: PaperMag.com

Have you ever wanted to have a local travel guide everywhere in the world? CouchSurfing is something I ran into a couple of years ago and have fallen in love with ever since: it’s an online community of travel-lovers.

Officially, “CouchSurfing is a worldwide network for making connections between travellers and the local communities they visit“. Unofficially, it’s more like a belief-system, a way of life and a passion that has overcome more than a million people in 230 countries!

When you sign up, you define ways in which you would be willing to help travellers to your city – offering your couch to sleep on (or extra bed, floor space); meeting for a cup of coffee or a drink or simply suggesting places to visit in your city. You may join local CS groups of different places to interact with other CS’ers, attend regular meetings etc. After you “host” or “surf” with someone, you leave a reference about your experience for the benefit of other CouchSurfers.

Image Courtesy: CouchSurfing.org

Even though Delft is not particularly high on the tourist-agenda, over the past two years, I have hosted 10-12 people from different countries – USA, Mexico, India, Slovenia, Germany, Spain – and have met numerous other wonderful people through CS meetings. I surfed a couch in Ahmedabad, India when this guy I met at a local CS Meeting let me crash at his place after knowing me for less than a couple of hours! Overall, a wonderful experience…so, the next time you’re planning a trip, give CouchSurfing a thought… it’s definitely worth it. And if you do, don’t forget to let me know how it went. Read more about CouchSurfing:

• CS Home Page – About CouchSurfing
• The Phoenix Story – How CS crashed and was recovered solely by volunteers
• My CS profile – Links to my CS friends and references

Are you a CouchSurfer? Are you thinking about signing up? Any travel plans in the near future? Let me know your experiences and about your travels…

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0 Comments The Petabyte Age: Making science obsolete...??

1 Terabyte = 1,000 Gigabytes; 1 Petabyte = 1000 Terabytes

Did you know that Google's servers process 1 Petabyte of data every 72 minutes?

A recent issue of WIRED magazine carries a series of articles on how the Petabyte Age is changing the world. While all of them make a good read, one in particular seems rather bold, to say the least...and has created a controversy of some sort...

The End of Theory: All models are wrong, science is obsolete!

Click on the link to read the full article and judge for yourself. The author suggests that today we have so much data and data processing (computing) power at our disposal that we don't need models (simplistic representations of reality) and theories (generalizations that broadly explain the logic behind the data and the models). Rather far-fetched, I would think.

Every scientist, researcher and statistician understands that mere correlation between data means nothing for explaining causation. Petabytes of data on how many times this article was read, by whom, from where and for how long will say nothing about the quality of the article or agreement / disagreement among the readers. Sure, it might provide some hints, but data is JUST data...and will always remain that.

Interpreting data and converting it into information requires wisdom, which comes from knowledge, which comes from all the theories and science that constantly keep evolving. Garbage In, Garbage Out... and the more garbage you put in, the more of it will come out UNLESS it is processed scientifically.

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