The Power of Data

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

As a result, an online retailer can now see not only what customers bought, but also everything they browsed and how much time they spent viewing a particular item. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter provide a massive amount of data about users’ likes and dislikes and, on a larger scale, about societal trends. More data, however, doesn’t necessarily mean more answers.

"I think sometimes we can lose sight of the question because we get enamored with the data. Thoughtful questions and careful consideration are key,"says Griffith.

"You can do web-based analysis [of unstructured data]," says Lopresti. "You can put in numbers, press a button and you’ll get an answer out of it. That’s dangerous because, unless you really understand the nuances of the way these things work, it’s not as simple, unfortunately, as using your toaster—you put the toast in, press a button, and either the toast comes out warm or it doesn’t. It’s not like that."

All the data in the world won’t do much if you’re not smart in how you use it, says Lopresti.

A deep connection and a strong foundation

Lehigh’s department of marketing, one of the Data X initiative’s three initial thrust areas (which also include digital media and bioengineering), is already invested in computer and data science. Many members of the marketing faculty conduct related research and provide students with meaningful hands-on experiences, including, for example, opportunities to work with real datasets to solve problems for actual businesses. Data X will take these efforts even further by providing opportunities for students to consider those same problems from different perspectives.

"While we have been doing things across the business school pretty well, I think [Data X] moves us outside of the business school and will move us to interacting a whole lot more with computer science, journalism, psychology, sociology, mathematics, et cetera," says Griffith.

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