Data is a different perspective to observe the world. Data visualization allows us to see things’ integer, so we understand problems from one-sided to overall. That is why data will make us more efficient than the past when facing the same problems.
For a simple example, the game Go is a typical “a minute to learn, a lifetime to master.” The gap between beginners and professional players is not just talent and experience. For beginners of Go, the process of playing chess is to follow the feeling after learning the rules. However, real professional players do not do so. They do a lot of Life-and-death problems everyday. In their minds, they remember tens of thousands of ways of life and death as well as a lot of formulae and dexterity, so when they faced with beginners, basically, there is a corresponding way to deal with what happens. I think this kind of memory of chessboard changes is data.
Similarly, Chinese students will actually take such a stupid way of memorizing a dictionary to pass GRE test. I think as such a way of memorizing a dictionary is also data. They put in a lot of hard work, because the amount of data and the amount of calculations are very large.
Thus, I think that what data ultimately brings us is a new way of thinking. On the one hand, we see the perspective of the problem from the one-sided extension to the overall. On the other hand, we can use this idea to create and collect data that we have overlooked in the past.