It is – or should be – well known that 82.63% of statistics are made up. Apparent precision gives an authority to numbers which is sometimes earned, but sometimes completely spurious. More generally, this short article argues that humans have long experiences of detecting verbal nonsense, but are much less adept at spotting nonsense conveyed through numbers – and suggests a few rules of thumb for reducing the risk of being caught out.
Much of the advice offered isn’t specific to the big data of the title – but it does as an aside offer a neat encapsulation of one of the very real risks of processes based on algorithms, that of assuming that conclusions founded on data are objective and neutral, “machines are as fallible as the people who program them—and they can’t be shamed into better behaviour”.