COMMENTARY


THE INFINITE COAST PARADOX


The length of Great Britain’s coast might appear finite. But, according to the infinite coast paradox, the more closely you measure the details of the coast- line, the longer it gets, illustrating the author’s point that more information doesn’t always improve understanding. (Image by Louis16/Getty Images)


difficulty becomes greatly exaggerated when complex mathemat- ics are performed on sparse or inaccurate data.


Taken together, we see the inherent trade-off between more and less data, and greater and lesser specification in calculations. Just as Goldilocks found, there is a place where models and data usage are not too hot and not too cold. Importantly, observe that the best model is somewhere well short of maximizing either the data usage or the model complexity.


Tis demonstrates Leinweber’s contention that the only valid reason to add more data and complexity to a mathematical model is to increase the accuracy of its result. In practice, getting this right requires domain knowledge and mathematical skill, not just the latest software package. And getting the model right matters greatly. As Leinweber wrote, “Important policy decisions should not be based on noise.” Depending on the data in question, there may be so much noise that reliable inferences are impossible.


In his book “Antifragile,” scholar and statistician Nassim Nicho- las Taleb more recently said it this way: “As we acquire more data, we have the ability to find many, many more statistically signif- icant correlations. Most of these correlations are spurious and deceive us when we’re trying to understand a situation. Falsity


grows exponentially the more data we collect. Te haystack gets bigger, but the needle we are looking for is still buried deep inside.”


According to John P.A. Ioannidis, professor of medicine and health research at Stanford University, in his paper “Why Most Published Research Findings are False,” this concern is not just theoretical: “Tere is increasing concern that in modern [medi- cal] research, false findings may be the majority or even the vast majority of published research claims.” Further, according to a 2016 survey by the premier science journal, Nature, 52 percent of researchers believe there is a “significant crisis” because the majority of published findings in many research fields cannot be duplicated. Only 3 percent stated there was no crisis at all. So before you seek the help of supercomputers and modern analyt- ics, pay close attention to the quality of your information and the complexity of your approach.


ALWAYS CHOOSE QUALITY OVER QUANTITY Computer science has now entered the Zettabyte Era. A zettabyte is a measure of digital information equaling 1021 (or 1,000 billion billion) bytes. According to Cisco Systems, global data volume exceeded one zettabyte in 2012 and internet traffic exceeded one zettabyte in 2016.


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