We are,I hardly need point out,living in a golden age of big data.It is completely changing the way most science is done;indeed some science can only exist because of our relatively recent ability to handle enormous data sets.This is a marvellous,exciting and vital thing for science-it has,however,given me a rather unusual problem.I find myself more and more consumed by the superlatives and analogies used to describe big data.Over the last two years alone 90% of the data in the world was generated...todays data centres occupy an area of land equal in size to almost 6,000 football fields...the number of bits of information is thought to have exceeded the number of stars in the physical universe in 2007.Lovely trivia tidbits,each and every one.And there are just so many of them.Frankly it’s a little overwhelming.
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