Swimming or drowning in data

Flowingdata’s Nathan Yao asks the question:

If everyone is drowning in data, does that mean statisticians are the life preservers?

My hope is that we, as data scientists, statisticians, economists and other quants, are helping people learn to swim rather than just keeping them afloat. That said, there were several great comments including at Nathan’s blog including:

The difference between swimming and drowning are whether you panic. It’s important to know when to let the current take you and when you need to break away from the current.

Statisticians are the 16-year-old lifeguards. They’re trained for something, but nobody is really sure what.