> chiefs death by a script writer in Hollywood. Apparently, the script
> writer wrote what he thought Seattles sentiments were. There are,
> however, some really interesting insights in this particular data!
Thanks Bruce for pointing this out. The gist of the quotation, whether
attributable to the Chief or not, still conveys the point I was trying to
make.
To respond to some posts in reply to my post, and just to clarify once
again, I do understand the difference between excessive data massaging
(hence wasting everyones time and money) and hi-level analysis. My point in
the post was simply that sticking to high-level analysis *only* can lead to
missing important insights that can only come from data (hence my examples
from physics). It can be easy to hide behind simplistic upper-level
analysis, and not look at details, even when warranted (hence my mention of
chaos theory).
On fancy GUIs - my feeling is rightly conveyed by Sun Microsystems CEO,
Scott McNealys, policy - no powerpoint presentations in his company!!! Full
quote and details on "Quorchives" on my web site. PLEASE dont shatter my
illusions on this one;_>
I guess it really depends - case by case. I had also made the point that
visionaries, VERY high-level analysts are very important - that was the very
point of giving the quotation, a statement of very high-level "systems
thinking" - with a high-quality data reference I might add - my teabox

Anyway, I think there is always this creative tension between high-level and
detail analysis. Good modeling, and data fidelity at *any* level, linear or
nonlinear modeling, can lead to good insights. A section of SDers are biased
only toward high-level analysis - which is great if you can successfully
pull it off - but I think it limits the SD potential. Some also think that
SD is the only way to model - that I think is limiting too.
Cheers & thanks to all for who replied -
Jaideep
jaideep@optimlator.com
http://www.optimlator.com/