Introduction – Data and the need to quantify: a personal perspective

There is an argument to be made that the only truly unifying language of our modern world lies in the ones and zeros of our pervasive digital universe, and it is in this ecosystem that the concept of big data resides. Yet remaining central to the utility we extract from the data we now collect by the terabyte is our ability to analyse, assess and prioritise – and importantly, the need to quantify.