(2012-02-27) Data Vs Model

Someone was writing about the DIKW model, and I responded with the Brain Fart-s Of The Day:

1. info/knowledge/wisdom are Model-s of increasing abstraction
2. data, while seemingly "objective reality" is really the output of a model.
3. actually, since lots of data collection is initiated by groups, data is the output of a collection of models integrated through human/social/political processes.
4. group-data is the new Group-Think?
5. over time, groups/models/Context-s change, but data definition and collection-processes change more slowly or never.
6. "let me control the data collection and I don't care who controls the analysis"
7. all data are wrong, some data are useful
8. increasingly, data itself will be machine/generated, so instead of rule-based system making conclusions we can't trace, we'll have data analysis systems where we can't trace the data.