From the report: "In a study that represents a potential cultural shift in how
basic science research can be conducted, researchers from Harvard Medical
School, Harvard Business School and London Business School have demonstrated
that a crowdsourcing platform pioneered in the commercial sector can solve a
complex biological problem more quickly than conventional approaches—and at a
fraction of the cost." Read more
Showing posts with label Big Data. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Big Data. Show all posts
Monday, February 11, 2013
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Ovum: Big Data Collection Collides with Privacy Concerns
From the article: "Ovum, in a recent survey of about 11,000 people across 11
countries, found that 68 percent said they would use a do-not-track feature if
it was easily available on a search engine. Just 14 percent of respondents said
they believe Internet companies are honest about their use of personal data." Read more
What the Intelligence Community Is Doing With Big Data
From the article: "It’s trying. Armed with billions of tweets, Google (GOOG)
searches, Facebook (FB)
posts, and other publicly available social-media and online data, the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence is sponsoring research projects involving
14 universities in the United States, Europe, and Israel with the goal of
using advanced analytics to predict significant societal events." Read more
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Your Social Networking Credit Score
From the article: "The buzzword tsunami that is “big data"—a handy way of
describing our vastly improved ability to collect and analyze humongous data
sets—has dwarfed “frictionless sharing” and “cloud computing” combined. As
befits Silicon Valley, “big data” is mostly big hype, but there is one
possibility with genuine potential: that it might one day bring loans—and
credit histories—to millions of people who currently lack access to them. But
what price, in terms of privacy and free will (not to mention the exorbitant
interest rates), will these new borrowers have to pay?" Read more
The Philosophy of Data
From the article: "Over the next year, I’m hoping to get a better grip on some
of the questions raised by the data revolution: In what situations should we
rely on intuitive pattern recognition and in which situations should we ignore
intuition and follow the data? What kinds of events are predictable using
statistical analysis and what sorts of events are not?....
In sum, the data revolution is giving us wonderful ways to
understand the present and the past. Will it transform our ability to predict
and make decisions about the future? We’ll see." Read more
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
What Google's Transparency Report Doesn't Tell Us
The company's latest report, released on Wednesday, shows that the U.S. government again led other nations in submitting the most requests for user data with Google. In the second half of 2012, the U.S. put in 8,438 requests for Internet user data, up 6% from the 7,979 requests it placed in the first six months of the year.
Between 2011 and 2012, U.S. data requests from Google increased by more than 30%....
Google's transparency reports do not include requests for user data made by the government under the U.S. Patriot Act, the Foreign Intelligence SurveillanceAmendment Act or through the use of National Security Letters (NSLs). Most of the requests made via these statutes are tied to national security issues and often compel providers to disclose far more data than ECPA subpoenas and court orders permit." Read more
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Big Data Brings Big Privacy Concerns
From the article: "Wary of privacy implications of massive data collection
systems, the Senate Commerce Committee plans to continue a probe of the
industry, coinciding with a separate inquiry underway at the Federal Trade
Commission." Read more
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Obscurity: A Better Way to Think About Your Data Than 'Privacy'
Obscurity is the idea that when information is hard to obtain or understand, it is, to some degree, safe. Safety, here, doesn't mean inaccessible. Competent and determined data hunters armed with the right tools can always find a way to get it. Less committed folks, however, experience great effort as a deterrent." Read more
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Big Data Meets Big Brother in the Passenger Screening Line
Sternstein, Aliya. "Big Data Meets Big Brother in the Passenger Screening Line." Nextgov, January 16, 2013.
From the article: "The Transportation Security Administration is considering screening
passengers based on behavioral profiles generated by commercial data brokers,
according to new contracting notices.
The agency potentially could use such computations to let consenting passengers with positive assessments bypass certain airport security inspections, officials said.
For a moment, set aside fears about TSA peering into your gun-buying habits or pharmacy purchases. Are commercial data aggregations even accurate? No one knows. Not the Federal Trade Commission or the Justice Department. Not the data brokers. And not the people being profiled -- they often aren’t allowed to see their own records." Read more
The agency potentially could use such computations to let consenting passengers with positive assessments bypass certain airport security inspections, officials said.
For a moment, set aside fears about TSA peering into your gun-buying habits or pharmacy purchases. Are commercial data aggregations even accurate? No one knows. Not the Federal Trade Commission or the Justice Department. Not the data brokers. And not the people being profiled -- they often aren’t allowed to see their own records." Read more
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Sure, Big Data Is Great. But So Is Intuition.
The quest to draw useful insights from business measurements is nothing new. Big Data is a descendant of Frederick Winslow Taylor’s “scientific management” of more than a century ago. Taylor’s instrument of measurement was the stopwatch, timing and monitoring a worker’s every movement. Taylor and his acolytes used these time-and-motion studies to redesign work for maximum efficiency. The excesses of this approach would become satirical grist for Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times.” The enthusiasm for quantitative methods has waxed and waned ever since." Read more
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Lack of Data Analysis Worrisome
According to a report published on Tuesday
by IDC, the market research firm, a large ‘big data gap’ is opening up between
the rapidly expanding digital universe – a measure of all the digital data
created, replicated and consumed in a single year. That data holds potential
analytic value that could have major business, health and societal impact. Only
0.4 per cent of that data are actually being analysed.
See
also
Social Media a Healthcare Data Gold Mine
Dembosky, April. "Social Media a Healthcare Data Gold Mine." The Financial Times, December 11, 2012.
Pharmaceutical companies already analyse social media sites to track reports of side-effects of their drugs. That data can help correct formulas more quickly than waiting for the results of years-long clinical trials; it can also be used to set prices and test marketing slogans.
Public health officials are also interested in social media data as a source of information on disease outbreaks." Read more
From the article: "Healthcare companies are loathe to tread into such sensitive territory, but
they are keenly aware of the goldmine of health data stored in people’s social media accounts…
Pharmaceutical companies already analyse social media sites to track reports of side-effects of their drugs. That data can help correct formulas more quickly than waiting for the results of years-long clinical trials; it can also be used to set prices and test marketing slogans.
Public health officials are also interested in social media data as a source of information on disease outbreaks." Read more
Making Dollars and Sense of the Open Data Economy
What I’m looking for now is more examples of startups and businesses that have been created using open data or that would not be able to continue operations without it. If big data is a strategic resource, it’s important to understand how and where organizations are using it for public good, civic utility and economic benefit." Read more
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Why Data is the Key to Better Medicine — and Maybe a Cure for Cancer
Harris, Derrick, "Why Data is the Key to Better Medicine — and Maybe a Cure for Cancer." GigaOm, November 27, 2012.
From the article: "The health care industry might have embraced the big data movement with open arms, but embracing it with open data probably would be more effective. Hospital organizations, researchers and the tech companies serving them have lots of great ideas — and have achieved some great results, too — but, ultimately, efforts to use big data to transform the industry will only be as good as the data these stakeholders have to work with. Right now, that isn’t always everything they need." Read more
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Rise of the Datavores: How UK Businesses Analyse and Use Online Data
From the report: "The internet economy is growing, and so is the amount of
data that it generates. Are UK businesses making the most of this data to
innovate and grow? Or are they missing out on the opportunities of online data?
A business survey by Nesta shows how a small but significant group of UK companies - the datavores - are making sophisticated use of data to drive business decisions.
This paper illustrates both the opportunities and challenges that online data presents for UK businesses." Read more
A business survey by Nesta shows how a small but significant group of UK companies - the datavores - are making sophisticated use of data to drive business decisions.
This paper illustrates both the opportunities and challenges that online data presents for UK businesses." Read more
Thursday, November 29, 2012
The Five Forces Shaping the 21st Century
Ranadive, Vivek. "The Five Forces Shaping the 21st Century." Forbes, November 27, 2012.
The 21st century didn’t start in the year 2000. It started in 2010, the same way the 20th century began in 1908 with the advent of the automobile. It became the century of highways and freeways, the century of the auto—the American century. Similarly, if you look at what happened a couple of years ago, there were all kinds of crossover points that happened around the same time: more cell phones than landlines, more laptops than desktops, more debit cards than credit cards, more farmed fish than wild fish, more girls in college than boys.
I am dedicated to the belief that if you get the right information to the right place at the right time and in the right context, you can make the world a better place. This is something I call the two-second advantage. In order to achieve that, you need to understand five forces shaping the 21st century.
The 21st century didn’t start in the year 2000. It started in 2010, the same way the 20th century began in 1908 with the advent of the automobile. It became the century of highways and freeways, the century of the auto—the American century. Similarly, if you look at what happened a couple of years ago, there were all kinds of crossover points that happened around the same time: more cell phones than landlines, more laptops than desktops, more debit cards than credit cards, more farmed fish than wild fish, more girls in college than boys.
I am dedicated to the belief that if you get the right information to the right place at the right time and in the right context, you can make the world a better place. This is something I call the two-second advantage. In order to achieve that, you need to understand five forces shaping the 21st century.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Why Big Data Could Sink Europe’s ‘Right To Be Forgotten'
Meyer, David. "Why Big Data Could Sink Europe’s ‘Right To Be Forgotten.'" GigaOm, November 20, 2012.
From the article: "Europe’s proposed ‘right to be forgotten’
has been the subject of intense debate, with many people arguing it’s simply
not practical in the age of the internet for any data to be reliably expunged from
history.
Well, add another voice to that mix. The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) has published its assessment of the proposals, and the tone is sceptical to say the least. And, interestingly, one of the biggest problems ENISA has found has to do with big data." Read more
Well, add another voice to that mix. The European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA) has published its assessment of the proposals, and the tone is sceptical to say the least. And, interestingly, one of the biggest problems ENISA has found has to do with big data." Read more
See also
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Who Are the Doctors Most Trusted by Doctors? Big Data Can Tell You.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
The Making of a (Big Data) President
Hurwitz, Judith. "The Making of a (Big Data) President." Bloomberg Businessweek, November 14, 2012.
From the article: For the first time in presidential politics, there is a considerable focus on the role that large amounts of data played in the course of the campaign. Technology has always been important for any political campaign, but in this presidential election, both campaigns attempted to use Big Data analytics as a strategic weapon. There were some important lessons to learn from how the data were used—and misused. Read more
From the article: For the first time in presidential politics, there is a considerable focus on the role that large amounts of data played in the course of the campaign. Technology has always been important for any political campaign, but in this presidential election, both campaigns attempted to use Big Data analytics as a strategic weapon. There were some important lessons to learn from how the data were used—and misused. Read more
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win
From the article: "Exactly what that team of dozens of data crunchers was doing, however, was a
closely held secret. “They are our nuclear codes,” campaign spokesman Ben
LaBolt would say when asked about the efforts. Around the office, data-mining
experiments were given mysterious code names such as Narwhal and Dreamcatcher.
The team even worked at a remove from the rest of the campaign staff, setting
up shop in a windowless room at the north end of the vast headquarters office.
The “scientists” created regular briefings on their work for the President and
top aides in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, but public details were in short
supply as the campaign guarded what it believed to be its biggest institutional
advantage over Mitt Romney’s campaign: its data." Read more