A lot of information

The church assistant treasurer has set up new ways to manage offerings such that everyone has more time to talk to each other following the formal service time.

I recently looked through about a hundred row of data to identify common and new information.

A friend has come to the end of a PhD journey and worked through a lot of field data to complete the thesis.

While you are in the middle of doing something, where you face a lot of information, it’s difficult to see the bigger picture. See the hundreds of birds flying together, not only they don’t clash to each other, they even make aerial formations.

I had the benefit of looking back to previous attempts on similar kind of data, to help understand this new set of data.

Indeed, at times, I lost the bigger picture; I wanted to “read further” into the data – what really happened there? No, there’s no point to trace back to history.

It’s quite amazing that we have the capacity to deal with a lot of information. Information can be ‘layered’, ‘linear’ and both. Making a lot of information meaningful is no mean task. Often a clear starting point is what you need. Look for particular thing in the information, ignore everything else.

I noticed the other day in the groocery store many customers queuing to pay their items. One customer had only very few items (some bottled drinks) but where he was, he had to wait for those in front of him with many more items to move on, before his turn came.

He wasn’t complaining, very relaxed. He did leave swiftly after paying.

Relax, when you are having to deal with a lot of information.