"public data" entries
Big data in 2013, and beyond; the Sunlight Foundation's new data mining app; and the growth of our planet's central nervous system.
Here are a few stories from the data space that caught my attention this week.
Big data will continue to be a big deal
“Big data” became something of a buzz phrase in 2012, with its role in the US Presidential election, and businesses large and small starting to realize the benefits and challenges of mountains upon zettabytes of data — so much so that NPR’s linguist contributor Geoff Nunberg thinks it should have been the phrase of the year.
Nunberg says that though “it didn’t get the wide public exposure given to items like ‘frankenstorm,’ ‘fiscal cliff‘ and YOLO,” and might not have been “as familiar to many people as ‘Etch A Sketch’ and ’47 percent'” were during the election, big data has become a phenomenon affecting our lives: “It’s responsible for a lot of our anxieties about intrusions on our privacy, whether from the government’s anti-terrorist data sweeps or the ads that track us as we wander around the Web.” He also notes that big data has transformed statistics into “a sexy major” and predicts the term will long outlast “Gangnam Style.” (You can read Nunberg’s full case for big data at NPR.)
Michael Flowers explains why applying data science to regulatory data is necessary to use city resources better.
A predictive data analytics team in the Mayor's Office of New York City has been quietly using data science to find patterns in regulatory data that can then be applied to law enforcement, public safety, public health and better allocation of taxpayer resources.
The future of desktops, ethics and big data, narrative vs spreadsheets.
This week on O'Reilly: Josh Marinacci predicted that 90% of computer users will rely on mobile, but 10% will still need desktops; the authors of "Ethics of Big Data" explored data's trickiest issues; and Narrative Science CTO Kris Hammond discussed narrative's role in data analytics.