Gauss, in his search for the missing dwarf planet Ceres, developed the method of least squares, which enables us to find the best model that fits the data set such that the error in the fit minimizes (...)
The earliest methods for recording data may have been notches on sticks to mark the passing of the days or poles stuck in the ground to mark sunrise on the solstices.
The reason that early states put so much effort and resource into large data-collection operations was that these states needed to raise taxes and armies, thus proving Benjamin Franklin's claim that there are only two things certain in life: death and taxes.
It is estimated that the amount of data collected over the five millennia ( five thousand years) since the invention of writing up to 2003 is about 5 exabytes. Since 2013, humans generate and store this same amount of data EVERY DAY.