A question about terminology: do we really need to abandon the term ‘data-driven’ in this context ? I’m thinking it still applies to the approach you’re speaking about - we just have to be clear what kind of data we’re talking about. After all, ‘evidence’ is factual - and facts are data. In other words evidence is data - so data-driven still makes sense as a term.
The article rightly complains about the misuse of data and the illusion that lots and lots of data (without analysis ) means lots of knowledge.
But it seems to me, one can still call the approach advocated for in the article ‘data-driven’ as long as we understand that’s we’re not talking about ‘big dumb’ data but rather the kind of data that comes from carefully constructed experiments (or surveys )
To respond somewhat tongue in cheek, you're assuming that people want evidence-based problem solving vs. decision-based evidence making.
Great article.
A question about terminology: do we really need to abandon the term ‘data-driven’ in this context ? I’m thinking it still applies to the approach you’re speaking about - we just have to be clear what kind of data we’re talking about. After all, ‘evidence’ is factual - and facts are data. In other words evidence is data - so data-driven still makes sense as a term.
The article rightly complains about the misuse of data and the illusion that lots and lots of data (without analysis ) means lots of knowledge.
But it seems to me, one can still call the approach advocated for in the article ‘data-driven’ as long as we understand that’s we’re not talking about ‘big dumb’ data but rather the kind of data that comes from carefully constructed experiments (or surveys )
2/2 these are first musings, not a critique. I’m interested in your thoughts on this as I’ve been wrestling with this question recently