Recently, I started writing code to analyse data from all kinds of financial and healthcare data APIs. The amount of information is endless. Most data sources have some sort of dashboard that allows you to slice and dice data in any way or form you want.

Still, the skill to make sense of this all is pretty much the same as it was 30 years ago.

I remember building a lot of company valuation models where I would sit on the buy side of an M&A transaction. As a buyer, I had to rely on outside information and focus on the data that matters. Often, I found that my model was more accurate than the one of the analyst on the sell side, who lost herself in the abundance of data available.

My workflow in the new abundance of data:

1. Use some sort of dashboard to explore what types of data is available

2. Use a spreadsheet as a napkin to scribble analyses

3. Code the analysis on a small scale

4. Scale up the analysis to a full scale

The crucial step is number 2.