statistics and damn lie

in my first year of statistics i was taught by one ms mcclain who was in her early twenty teaching us english language - no literature no grammar but the language spoken in england
she used to read a book to us - lie damn lie and statistics
we teenagers were all in love with this lady and we did not have any girl in our class
we only looked at her with loving eyes in our native language and not interested in language of english spoken by a young english girl from scotland

i met statistics in many places in the world afterwards

during my advanced studies my h-o-d put me in touch with one taresh maitra who was seeking to do his phd in econometrics from a survey data
i did data cleansing and tabulation for him but i did not like doing the same

i joined org
there were people doing survey and publishing their analysis
i was one statistician programmer
i was doing a job then and meeting their expectations

i was engaged about two years doing some statistics that i enjoyed
it was planning for dam canal infrastructure to harness water from narmada river flowing into arabian sea and economic planning and development of catchment area
i had to do optimised long term planning for cost benefit
it was very creative activity and i was not working for name or fame
it was very long term perpetual stable planning for that part of gujarat mp and maharashtra

gujarat is notorious for losing vast area of land for cultivation due to salinity and waste of money from wrong planning
it was a world bank project they insisted proper use of their money investment and assured return
state was not happy about what we proposed and they cancelled our engagement
their optimization ended at what amount of investment they can procure from wb
and that only mattered

i left my job at org only to return after one year for the same project because of my work and insisted by wb for the completion of the project
i laid down the long term planning objective as well as the program for canal sub canal groundwater integration in minute day to day details of operation and infrastructure requirement
i also did the growth plan simulation of the catchment area for very long term and determining the factors of growth that we would like to see happening there
i was not very liked by my superiors and i did not enjoy my office
i left to embrace my love of programming and quitting statistics

these days all engaged in computer is graduating from mobile applications
and embracing data science

ds is being used for all new business of future
self driven car, ai, machine learning, automated customer service, finding truth in big data, and of course - prediction

there is money and honey in it and thus so many buzzing bees
i meet lot of people who are in this business and all are promoters of building blocks for creations of infrastructure for big data
i do not believe big data yields any correct result in long or short term
i see they are engaged in creating barns of very very large repository of haystacks and mining the same
one cannot get a diamond there but may find a lost needle
it is great big waste of resources

the money and honey is coming from political parties ensuring victory in their polls
they are well funded by the their corporate patrons
but in recent poll in usa showed utter disappointments - hillary clinton lost after $2.5 billion expenditure and predicted winner with 90% confidence
democrats could not digest this result and still suffering

political parties have not lost hope since they cannot lose hope

there is very great exercise and extravaganza going on in India
election that is taking place is spread over two months
it is via electronic machine may be biased expected to be unbiased counting machine
and incapable of recording who is voter
and no recounting is possible

modern tools technology and not much of science is involved to ensure victory for party or individuals

we have seen recently a non politician comedian elected in ukraine
retired 90 plus reluctant administrator elected as president in indonesia ...

of course there is not much faith in prediction or predictability from big data old or present
data science is not a science

last few days i am listening to statisticians and their version of faith in their prediction
they are 50% right in predicting outcome

the coin they are tossing
they call it data science is fair
without any bias for failure or success

data no matter however large and the science however contemporary was unable to create any bias towards correctness of their prediction!!!!!!!!!!!!!

why

gone are the days when data was used for poverty elimination sufficiency and prosperity

now

data is being used for finding beliefs and opinions of people to win election or for promotion of sales
are they not known already known for any nation
the way a nation is fractured as per classes religion or castes ...
census is being done for last 100 years in all parts of world

data is used to make corporations profitable without any value creation

data is used by groups or individuals for making investment in stock market bonds and valuables to earn in short or longer term income without any value addition or creation
bubbles waiting to be burst
and they do

stock market is the source of activity not industry not farming not mining not exploration not any other avenues of value creation

what can one predict from a big barn of hays

one can only have accurate statistics of weight count quantity etc nothing about quality and no prediction
any prediction success 50% failure 50%

suppose you have coin and you know nothing about the same
somebody tosses it
what is the outcome
whatever be the outcome ~ the choice is made in heaven ~ all feelings are lies ~ all predictions are lies and so is every events