Here is my response to Nathan’s article, “Business intelligence vs. infotainment“, on Flowing Data. Nathan’s article was in response to Stephen’s earlier article on Perceptual Edge, “Teradata, David McCandless, and yet another detour for analytics“.
We should leave “playing doctor” to the children
In considering this great debate, perhaps we should step back and consider another field, medicine. For centuries, medicine was guided by wishes, fantasy and misguided ideas of what would heal people. One of my favorite examples is “trephining” (drilling holes in your head) to release the evil spirits that have made the patient ill. Of course, for a very small percent of patients, this proved helpful. However, most ended up no better and typically much worse for their procedure.
I feel that McCandless work is “fun” and vibrant, but
