by Ted Cuzzillo
Visualization guru and data-industry skeptic Stephen Few in has a worthwhile review of Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O’Neil.
Data can be used in harmful ways. This fact has become magnified to an extreme in the so-called realm of Big Data, fueled by an indiscriminate trust in information technologies, a reliance on fallacious correlations, and an effort to gain efficiencies no matter the cost in human suffering.
by Ted Cuzzillo
Someone introduced himself recently as a “data scientist” to a data warehouse pro I know. “I thought he was a fool,” said Interworks consultant Tim Costello. He says it’s a meaningless term — and I believe it’s another one of those distractions thrown around in a roiling industry.
One of the most interesting of the others I’ve heard is Scott Davis, the founder of Lyzasoft. He emailed this week from somewhere on the Caribbean, “Data scientist is just a term someone applied to a set of skills and practices that have existed for a very, very long time. Like, since the invention of the abacus.”… Read the rest “Don’t call yourself a “data scientist””
by Ted Cuzzillo
A remarkable thing happened in Big Data last week. One of Big Data’s best friends poked fun at one of its icons: the Three V’s.
The well-networked and alert observer Shawn Rogers, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates, tweeted his eight V’s: “…Vast, Volumes of Vigorously, Verified, Vexingly Variable Verbose yet Valuable Visualized high Velocity Data.”
He was quick to explain to me that this is no comment on Gartner analyst Doug Laney’s three-V definition. Shawn’s just tired of people getting stuck on V’s.
How strange to be stuck on a definition, but we get stuck all the time trying to define Big Data.… Read the rest “Big Data, big hype, big danger”