Data doesn’t say anything. Humans say things.

Data is not a perfect representation of reality: It’s a fundamentally human construct, and therefore subject to biases, limitations, and other meaningful and consequential imperfections.  

The clearest expression of this misunderstanding is the question heard from boardrooms to classrooms when well-meaning people try to get to the bottom of tricky issues:  “What does the data say?”  

Data doesn’t say anything. Humans say things. 

They say what they notice or look for in data—data that only exists in the first place because humans chose to collect it, and they collected it using human-made tools. Data can’t say anything about an issue any more than a hammer can build a house or almond meal can make a macaron. Data is a necessary ingredient in discovery, but you need a human to select it, shape it, and then turn it into an insight.  Data is therefore only as useful as its quality and the skills of the person wielding it.   

Andrea Jones-Rooy writing in Quartz