{"id":932,"date":"2013-06-04T12:39:06","date_gmt":"2013-06-04T19:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/?p=932"},"modified":"2013-06-04T12:39:06","modified_gmt":"2013-06-04T19:39:06","slug":"big-data-is-still-just-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/2013\/06\/04\/big-data-is-still-just-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Big data is still just data"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bigdata\"\u00a0by\u00a0<\/em><\/span>BBVAtech<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Big data vs. big reality<\/a>
[Via O’Reilly Radar<\/a><\/span>]<\/p>\n

\n

This post originally appeared on Cumulus Partners<\/a>. It\u2019s republished with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n

Quentin Hardy\u2019s recent post in the Bits blog of The New York Times touched on the gap between representation and reality that is a core element of practically every human enterprise. His post is titled \u201cWhy Big Data is Not Truth<\/a>,\u201d and I recommend it for anyone who feels like joining the phony argument over whether \u201cbig data\u201d represents reality better than traditional data.<\/p>\n

In a nutshell, this \u201cus\u201d versus \u201cthem\u201d approach is like trying to poke a fight between oil painters and water colorists. Neither oil painting nor water colors are \u201ctruth\u201d; both are forms of representation. And here\u2019s the important part: Representation is exactly that \u2014 a representation or interpretation of someone\u2019s perceived reality. Pitting \u201cbig data\u201d against traditional data is like asking you if\u00a0Rembrandt is more \u201creal\u201d than Gainsborough. Both of them are artists and both painted representations of the world they perceived around them.\"\"<\/p>\n

[More<\/a>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Data by itself has no meaning.<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>It does not if it is big or traditional. Data simply exists.<\/em><\/p>\n

It requires interaction with human beings to be transformed into information, humans to provide context, humans to provide understanding. It requires interactions between human being to transform data into information and beyond onto knowledge.<\/em><\/p>\n

As I wrote “Information that is held by an individual, which is never revealed or acted upon, has no value. The greatest medical discovery in the world does little good if it dies with the discoverer.”<\/em><\/p>\n

All big data is allow humans to examine data that is too large, too complex or too difficult to examine by traditional means.<\/em><\/p>\n

But the problems with any data \u2013 confirmation bias, cherry-picking, etc. \u2013 do not simply go away because the data is big. It still requires humans to transform this data into meaningful knowledge.<\/em><\/p>\n

That still requires open and transparent communication between people to function best.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0by\u00a0BBVAtech Big data vs. big reality[Via O’Reilly Radar] This post originally appeared on Cumulus Partners. It\u2019s republished with permission. Quentin Hardy\u2019s recent post in the Bits blog of The New York Times touched on the gap between representation and reality that is a core element of practically every human enterprise. His post is titled \u201cWhy … Continue reading Big data is still just data<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[24,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cargo-cult-worlds","category-exponential-economy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pe2yp-f2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreadingscience.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}