Data are everywhere, forcefully and incessantly cascading down on us in an invisible, impalpable electric rain. But how much do we know about data? Data will indeed flow faster and more copiously through the pipelines of the future, but the information carried by the zeros and ones will inevitably suffer degradation through human error. The problem is already beginning to become apparent, probably be set by human frailty — for both our propensity to make mistakes and the limitations of our puny brains, especially that of the data scientists. The incompetence in understanding data among data scientist more than convinced me that the word ‘data scientist’ is an euphemism for ‘imbeciles’. Should these imbeciles in the privacy of their thoughts really yearn to understand why — at least at some level — I encourage them to start with this book — the human fallibility in data management may be mitigated if not completely eliminated. This book offers a range of topics floating in the form of a soft, translucent box of peeled, seedless grapes shimmering indistinctly in all the colours of the rainbow at once. More explicitly, this book spans from Boltzman-to-Shannon’s classical information to unquestioned, unexplored terrain-incognito of quantum information. While this book is excellently written, this book set me peeved at times when the author extolled and gave much reverence to the ivy-league degrees, which in my view, are equivalent to a toilet roll. Except for this, the book serves as a lodestar and holds people’s — who do not know or understand data — course far away from the choppy waters of data and let sail though safely!

Upon this gifted age, in this dark hour,
Falls from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts …. they lie unquestioned, uncombined

Wisdom enough to leach us of our ill
Is daily spun: but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric …