The history of the data economy: The birth of customer insight

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Today’s data-driven economy relies heavily on mathematics, statistics and computer science, but its roots owe as much to pragmatic trial and error as to pioneers of social statistics such as Adolphe Quetelet.

While theoreticians wrangled over how humans varied, and how to quantify this, those who saw the value of data in the nascent mass society were already collecting and using it.

The first people to treat public opinion as a form of data were newspaper publishers in 19th-century America, who used ‘straw polls’ of readers to anticipate election results. The Harrisburg Pennsylvanian’s 1824 presidential election poll is often cited as the first political poll. It accurately predicted that Andrew Jackson would win the popular vote, though John Quincy Adams was ultimately elected president.

This straw-poll approach continued in use until the 1930s. Although newspapers actively went out to survey different groups in the population, they relied more on very large numbers of responses than on any statistical theory to accurately reflect the mood of the ...