Sae Chi, The University of Western Australia e Linda Robson, The University of Western Australia
We have learnt to be wary of big data, but it can also be your friend: one platform combines and analyses data about housing, jobs and transport to reveal very useful information about living in Perth.
Companies use data to make a portrait of their users.
ImageFlow/shutterstock.com
Big tech companies compete over who can gather the most intelligence on their users. Countries like Russia and China turn this information against their citizens.
Summing up a student in numbers.
Chatchai Kritsetsakul/shutterstock.com
US schools now collect detailed data on their students. But teachers and parents need to think carefully about how that data is used – and what it shows, or doesn’t show, about a student.
John Stockton holds the NBA record for career assists.
REUTERS/John Amis
Why are three-pointer shots from the corner more efficient than the ones above the break? The answer: More than 90 percent of corner three-point shots are assisted.
The General Data Protection Regulations have been in force since May 2018. Analysis of its four key measures: labels, liability obligation, portability and pseudonymisation.
Smart planning of cities needs to include addressing citizens’ privacy concerns.
Shutterstock
For decades, advertisers and marketers struggled to predict the consumption of leisure products such as movies and books. Now, big data reveals how people really spend their leisure time.
The federal government should have a role in the regulation of digital infrastructure.
Alan O'Rourke/Flickr
Kai Zhang, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Science is in a reproducibility crisis. This is driven in part by invalid statistical analyses that happen long after the data are collected – the opposite of how things are traditionally done.
Digital technologies put an abundance of data at our fingertips, but we must ensure questions of what should, and should not, be measured are answered before we use them in official statistics.
Often the value of data science lies in the work of joining the dots.
Shutterstock
Data science can map where street harassment is most prevalent, ensure public bins don’t overflow and identify neighbourhoods with poor fire safety standards in the home.
Few health care professionals are currently tapping into smarthpone data to inform clinical decisions, but it could help.
Shutterstock
If you carry your smartphone with you everywhere, then the data it tracks could provide a comprehensive picture of your health – and alert you if it begins to deteriorate.
The Endangered Species Act was enacted in 1973 partly to help save the bald eagle, the U.S. national symbol, from extinction. Should public appeal influence which species get priority?
Jitze Couperus
How should the US spend limited funds for conserving endangered species? A new data tool lets managers compare different strategies so they can allocate money to protect the most species.
A fragment of an ancestral Pueblo jar dating to c. A.D. 1150.
Keith Kintigh, Arizona State University
Only a small fraction of the data from archaeological fieldwork is made accessible to the public or preserved for future research.
Is a cassette player an “ordinary object” or a “mystery”? It depends on whom you ask, and ethnography can help you ask the right questions.
Yoshikazu Takada
Big data is all the rage in management circles and beyond, yet little is said about the understanding needed with such voluminous data. An important lesson can be learned from ethnographic research.
Charting a path to success.
everything possible/shutterstock.com