Data, models and their purpose

Devajyoti Ghose and George Soulellis

The world [data] is all that is the case

(with apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein)

7.1 INTRODUCTION

Venice in the 17th century was a commercial hub, powered by the merchant ships that docked there. The telescope had recently been invented by the Dutch and then refined and popularised by Galileo to explore the heavens. Commercial interests in Venice used it to get advance information on the ships coming into the harbour and the commodities they carried, which would hit the market that day. This advance knowledge enabled savvy Venetian traders to get a jump on the proceedings by buying (and selling) products before the ship was in. Notably, the data associated with the identity of the ships and their respective cargos (like a lot of data today) was always available; however, harvesting it for commercial purposes required a combination of the right technology and resources and entrepreneurial ingenuity. It is unclear whether Venetian traders were trading on the material non-public information (MNPI) of the day(!), but the endeavour to convert data into information, and then use that information for making decisions was as important then as it is now. Of course, the financial world has