Small Basket Problem

This morning on the Today programme on Radio 4, a titan of industry (whose name I have already forgotten) said “this is the problem of small baskets trying to survey very complex… things”. He paused beautifully at the point where I have inserted that ellipsis. Leaving aside the intriguing notion of baskets carrying out surveys, this seems to be a statement of brilliant profundity. I have been thinking about it for a couple of hours now and have yet to winkle from it the core of its wisdom.