Data are quite important.  And with big data, there are more and more data elements to contend with.  The 3 V’s of big data: velocity, volume, and variety attest to this.  But are all data created equal?  NO.  So the statistician has an ongoing and increasingly important role to assure relevant, representative data are being analyzed.   This talk will discuss where data analytics meets statistics and some of the great potential and, yes, the pitfalls, of our deriving useful information from all that data.  It also includes examples from the author’s real-life involving court cases and presentations for the President.

Key words: Big data, analytics, statistician’s role, pitfalls