I find the notion that there can be a "broad mentality of data transparency" very encouraging. Culture is definitely one of the biggest obstacles to effective u

I find the notion that there can be a "broad mentality of data transparency" very encouraging. Culture is definitely one of the biggest obstacles to effective utilisation of data. In my experience managing physical assets, a little bit of broad knowledge (SQL, relation databases, statistics) has greatly improved my own capabilities: I can speak the language of the IT folks who shepherd my data, and I can keep a skeptical eye on the quantitative risk folks. I can stand by my analyses because I trust the ingredients and can enumerate/quantify the risks. Conversely though, without being bit of a data jack-of-all-trades, it's harder to see the cool potential in our existing datasets. Especially if the environment/culture doesn't contain the right people to share this knowledge. I'm hoping that some sort of data-basic-training becomes standard in undergrad engineering courses in the future.