Presented during the WKWSCI Symposium 2014 21 March 2014 Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre Organized by the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University

1. Layering Common Sense
on Top of All That Rocket Science
Dr. Sharon Dunwoody
University of Wisconsin-Madison
USA
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WKWSCI
SYMPOSIUM
2014
Big Data, Big Ideas for Smarter Communities

2. Big data
• Data sets that are too big to be handled by
regular storage and processing infrastructures
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WKWSCI SYMPOSIUM 2014
Big Data, Big Ideas for Smarter Communities

3. An explosion of big data in all fields
• Physicists
• Ecologists
• Social scientists
• Journalists
• Humanists
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WKWSCI SYMPOSIUM 2014
Big Data, Big Ideas for Smarter Communities

4. 4
WKWSCI SYMPOSIUM 2014
Big Data, Big Ideas for Smarter Communities

5. Advantages
• Data gathering is unobtrusive
• Important patterns may be visible from 30,000
feet up
• Can capture change over time
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WKWSCI SYMPOSIUM 2014
Big Data, Big Ideas for Smarter Communities

6. Boyd, D & Crawford, K (2012)
Critical questions for big data
Information, Communication &
Society 15:5, 662-679, DOI:
10.1080/1369118X.2012.6788
78WKWSCI SYMPOSIUM 2014
Big Data, Big Ideas for Smarter Communities

7. Automating research changes
the definition of knowledge
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WKWSCI SYMPOSIUM 2014
Big Data, Big Ideas for Smarter Communities

8. Objectivity and accuracy continue
to be elusive
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WKWSCI SYMPOSIUM 2014
Big Data, Big Ideas for Smarter Communities

9. Bigger data are not always better data
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WKWSCI SYMPOSIUM 2014
Big Data, Big Ideas for Smarter Communities

10. Accessible data may not
be ethical data
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WKWSCI SYMPOSIUM 2014
Big Data, Big Ideas for Smarter Communities

11. The best antidote for possible
misinterpretations?
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WKWSCI SYMPOSIUM 2014
Big Data, Big Ideas for Smarter Communities

12. Andrew Ross Sorkin
New York Times
The greatest challenge of Big
Data—especially social
media—is separating the
signal from all the noise.
Media Report/Big (Bad) Data
26 February 2014
blogs.nytimes.com
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WKWSCI SYMPOSIUM 2014
Big Data, Big Ideas for Smarter Communities