Big Data: Does Size Matter?

ISBN-13: 9781472920072 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 320 str.

Timandra Harkness

Opis

From the first tally, scratched on a wolf bone over thirty thousand years ago, to the Large Hadron Collider, which produces forty million megabytes of data per second, data is big, and getting bigger. It can help us do things faster and more efficiently than ever before, from tracking wolves through Minnesota by GPS to predicting which crimes are likely to happen where. Mega data has led to scientific and social achievements that would have been impossible just a few years ago. But being too dazzled by the scale, the speed, and the geeky jargon can lead us astray. It's big, but it's not always clever. Timandra Harkness cuts through the hype to put data science into its real-life context using a wide range of stories, people, and places to reveal what is essentially a human science--demystifying big data, telling us where it comes from and what it can do. BIG DATA then asks the awkward questions: What are the unspoken assumptions underlying its methods? Are we being bamboozled by mega data's size, its speed, and its shiny technology? Nobody needs a degree in computer science to follow Harkness's exploration of what mega data can do for us--and what it can't or shouldn't. BIG DATA asks you to decide: Are you a data point, or a human being?

Recenzje

A superb explanation of how we got to today. Evening Standard

Spis treści

Introduction: What is it? Where did it come from?1: What Is Data? And what makes it big?2: Death and Taxes. And Babies.3: Thinking MachinesWhat Has Big Data Done For Us?4: Big Business5: Big Science6: Big Society7: Data Driven DemocracyBig Ideas?8: Big Brother9: Who Do We Think You Are?10: Are You A Data Point Or A Human Being?Appendix - things you can do to keep your data privateAcknowledgements

O autorze

Timandra Harkness is a writer, comedian and broadcaster who has been performing on scientific, mathematical and statistical topics since the latter days of the 20th Century. She has written about travel for the Sunday Times, motoring for the Telegraph, science & technology for WIRED, BBC Focus Magazine and Men's Health Magazine, and on being 'Seduced by Stats' for Significance (the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society). She is a regular on BBC Radio, resident reporter on social psychology series The Human Zoo as well as writing and presenting documentaries and BBC Radio 4's FutureProofing series. In 2010 she co-wrote and performed Your Days Are Numbered: The Maths of Death with stand-up mathematician Matt Parker, which was a sell-out hit at the Edinburgh Fringe before touring the rest of the UK and Australia. Science comedy since then includes solo show Brainsex, cabarets and gameshows. She is currently writing a new comedy show about Big Data. Meanwhile, she puts her MC skills to more serious uses, hosting and chairing events with Cheltenham Science Festival, the British Council, the Institute of Ideas, the Wellcome Collection and a Robotics conference in Moscow, among many others. In her spare time she is studying for an Open University degree in Mathematics & Statistics.@TimandraHarknes/ timandraharkness.com