“Data, no matter how big, can only tell you what happened in the past. Unless you’re a historian, you actually care about the future — what will happen, what could happen, what would happen if you did this or that. Exploring these questions will always require models. Let’s get over ‘big data’ — it’s time for ‘big modeling’.”
-Bret Victor (link)
This reminds me of a similar point I made in 2008, about Graph Sketcher.