Week 3

Rise of Big Data

Data and data analysis is changing business, health care, society, and education, largely necessitated by growth in abundance of data. As data mining and analytics develop in technique and application, their influence on decision makers will increase. "Big data" is challenging long-established methods within science. Data scientists (though some argue it's not a useful term – see Quora readings this unit) have enormous control over how we experience data and what is known about us by businesses and governments. How does big data impact education? What roles do data scientists and practitioners play in corporations, K-12 schools, and higher education? We'll tackle these topics in greater detail this week.

Readings and Resources

This week is fairly heavy in both readings and videos. However, all of the resources listed below are important to review as they begin to form the foundation for understanding the "big data" trend facing society.

Anderson, C. (2008, June 23). The end of theory: The data deluge makes the method obsolete. Wired Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/2008/06/pb-theory/

Anderson, P.W. (1972). More is different. Science [New Series], 177(4047), 393–396. Retrieved from https://cse-robotics.engr.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72more_is_different.pdf

Data, data everywhere. (2010, February 25). The Economist. Retrieved from https://www.economist.com/special-report/2010/02/27/data-data-everywhere?story_id=15557443

Jer. (2010, July 12). Wired UK, Barabási Lab and BIG data. Retrieved from http://blog.blprnt.com/blog/blprnt/wired-uk-barabasi-lab-and-big-data

Quilty-Harper, C. (2010, August 25). 10 ways data is changing how we live. The Telegraph. Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/7963311/10-ways-data-is-changing-how-we-live.html

Stephen Wolfram: Computing a theory of everything [Video]. (2010). Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/stephen_wolfram_computing_a_theory_of_all_knowledge

What is Hadoop? Other big data terms like MapReduce? Cloudera's CEO talks us through big data trends [Video]. (2010). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9xnYBVqLws

Activities

1. This week, after you've had time to review the readings, please share your thoughts and reflections on the growing influence of big data in a discussion message of Week 3’s discussion forum in Moodle. Take time to post comments on the messages of other COMP 683 learners.
2. Download either CMAP or VUE and begin working on your concept map for this course. (More information on this assignment can be found here: How You Will Be Marked) Please take a look at The Theory Underlying Concept Maps and How to Construct and Use Them for some examples as well as to get a theoretical and detailed overview on what concept maps are.