forbesI recently gave an interview to Forbes and Dorie Clark about Big Data and my new book. Here’s an excerpt:

Data Visualization may be the next big thing. You have massive amounts of data – how can you possibly comprehend it? Enter data visualization, which Simon believes is “absolutely essential for organizations…[These tools] are helping employees make sense of the never-ending stream of data hitting them faster than ever. Our brains respond much better to visuals than rows on a spreadsheet. This goes way beyond Excel charts, graphs, or even pivot tables. Companies like Tableau Software have allowed non-technical users to create very interactive and imaginative ways to visually represent information.”

Intuition isn’t dead. It turns out Big Data and the certainty of numbers hasn’t killed intuition, after all. “Contrary to what some people believe,” says Simon, “intuition is as important as ever. When looking at massive, unprecedented datasets, you need some place to start. Intuition is more important than ever precisely because there’s so much data now. We are entering an era in which more and more things can be tested.

Big Data has, at least not yet, replaced intuition; the latter merely complements the former. The relationship between the two is a continuum, not a binary.

To read the whole interview, click here.