[puranjay]

Data is useless for art because art is expected to explore the boundaries of what's acceptable and what's conventional. There is no data for things that haven't even been done yet.

Historical data on sales of paintings would've never told Picasso to pursue Cubism, or for Salinger to write 'Catcher in the Rye'.

It was data that causes so many publishing houses to reject future bestsellers. Sales figures for past children's books told publishers that "Harry Potter" would never work.

We all know how that played out.

As for business, existing data would have never told Jobs to build an iPhone - simply because there really was no data on touchscreen devices.

[lmm]

> Historical data on sales of paintings would've never told Picasso to pursue Cubism, or for Salinger to write 'Catcher in the Rye'.

In that case I wish art would be data-driven, and produce more of the pre-Picasso paintings that are fun to look at and pre-Salinger books that are fun to read.