The pervasive influence of data

On any given day there is a slew of data-generated headlines – today, taking the briefest of glances at the news agenda, there’s record-breaking rainfall and a slowdown in the construction sector.

Picture courtesy of Neil Winton via Flickr

But one story that really caught my eye was the quirky news that Leicester Tigers rugby union club plans to use data insights to determine the likelihood of injury to their players.

Using analytical tools from IBM, makers of data journalism tool Many Eyes, the club hopes to monitor physical factors like fatigue and game intensity and psychological data such as stress levels in order to deliver personalised training programmes.

And crucially, they hope data will propel the club to cup-winning success says coach Andy Shelton.

“[Rugby] gets more competitive every year and our focus must be on helping our players stay injury-free for longer.

“There is no point in collecting stats unless you can know what to do with it. But by predicting things before they happen is where we can make gains, and considerably enhance performance.”

It seems to me, particularly after my visit to Big Data Week, that datasets and the myriad trends and forecasts buried within them, can touch, influence and steer our lives in countless creative ways.

Some even boldly refer to data as the ‘new oil’.

Yes, heavy number crunching offers opportunities aplenty for savvy journalists but from arts to dating and everything inbetween (like sport), it has rich bounty for countless other sectors.

Provided, as Leicester’s coach so astutely points out, we learn how to plunder, process and sculpt data into something useful.