Big Data still means Good Science

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"There is nothing new under the sun". Nate Silver points to this quote as being indicative of man's lack of progress until the industrial revolution. In the vernacular it is meant that the more things change the more they remain the same. Big data, open data and the new vast piles of noise we sit on mean nothing without analysis. Acknowledging that all researchers have bias and there is no such thing as unbiased information or knowledge is a good thing.
Big Data is still data which we use to support hypotheses and against which we measure and test theories. No type of big data, open data or government open data is a silver bullet. Data has to be transformed into information and knowledge through contextual inquiry.

When, on a summer Sunday morning in 1987, three hundred thousand people crammed onto the central span of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, they came perilously close to participating in...read more below

Are We All Being Fooled by Big Data?

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