It has already been done.
Over centuries, woodworkers have accumulated knowledge about wood and handed it down through generations, adding and refining continually. To me, this is the definition of "extracting useful information from a huge number of data points."
You can find this wealth of information easily - there is an online wood database for those who don't believe it if they can't read it on a computer monitor, and there are many books available for those who like to read off-line. Two that I own are "A Guide to Useful Woods of the World" and "A Guide to More Useful Woods of the World" (both edited by James Flynn). Apparently they are not easy to locate so I am fortunate to own copies of both.
