Policy by the Numbers: These Weeks in Data: 10/19/2012 & 10/26/2012

These Weeks in Data: 10/19/2012 & 10/26/2012

Friday, October 26, 2012

We didn't post a roundup last Friday due to mitigating circumstances (sorry!), so this week's roundup covers the last two weeks.

O'Reilly data guru Alex Howard writes about revisions to San Francisco's open data legislation aimed at putting more resources into the already vibrant innovation economy around the city's open data. The legislation would create a chief data officer in the mayor's office to facilitate data sharing and data-driven decisionmaking.

Thomas Davenport, Paul Barth and Randy Bean write for MIT Sloan Management review about how "big data" is different from traditional data processing and analytics in enterprise. Frankly, though, their argument only underscores a shift in the way we approach and derive insight from big data, not just its size—that is, the most disruptive aspect of "big data" is the innovation it drives in how we gather, analyze, and utilize data across domains and disciplines.

Google Research conducted an interview with Google statistician Rachel Schutt about data science inside and outside of Google. An excerpt:

R@G: What important problem would you like to see solved with data?
RS: I’d like my beautiful, smart, non-verbal, (severely) autistic brother, Alex, to be taken seriously as the intelligent human being he is and to be given the opportunity to speak. One day, Data Scientists could solve this. Generally I want to see data being used to solve problems of social value.

Writing for The Atlantic, Arizona State University student Jathan Sadowski makes a great case for the reinstatement of the Office of Technology Assessment, a Congressional agency defunded by Newt Gingrich in the 90s. Sathan writes:

The OTA holds an important place in history and as technology becomes increasingly complex, socially embedded, and wrapped up in policy we should look to it for lessons about how to apply these techniques in the present and future.

If you want to learn more about the OTA, Princeton maintains a fantastic OTA resource, with an electronic archive of the Office's publications. Also worth a read is Chris Mooney's article from the Bulletin for Atomic Scientists in 2005 that Sathan links to, "Requiem for an Office

Policy by the Numbers

These Weeks in Data: 10/19/2012 & 10/26/2012

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