There was a previous replier that mentioned Tibco Spotfire. This software solution deserves, IMHO, a much stronger endorsement. I have no idea how much it costs and I suspect it's hell'a expensive, but know this: it will let you visualize the living daylights out of whatever data you can throw at it.

As another poster mentioned, there is no substitute for UNDERSTANDING your data. But sometimes 'understanding' must be arrived at by an initial hypothesis (an educated guess) and the data must support the hypothesis. Tibco is a tool that will let you visualize the data very easily to test these hypotheses, in a very dynamic and flexible way.

How does it work? Think about pivot tables in Excel... then think about feeding it the same juice that the Incredible Hulk took. It's pivot tables on lots and lots of steroids.

The "laws" of science simply *describe*. They do not govern.
Here's a couple pearls I've picked up:
"Science is the attempt to come up with systematic, coherent and useful descriptions of how the natural world works."
- Chris Mack, litho guru

Science always deals with models of reality, not the ultimate nature of reality.
- http://www.lightandmatter.com/