I read a piece last night called 5 Ways Big Data Will Change Lives In 2013. I really wasn’t expecting much from it, just scrolling through accumulated articles on Zite. However, as with so many things, there were some gems to be had. I learned of Aadhar.
Aadhar is an ambitious government Big Data project aimed at becoming the world’s largest biometric database by 2014, with a goal of capturing about 600 million Indian identities.
On New Year’s Eve, All Tech Considered, had a segment looking ahead to interesting technology in the coming year. One of the themes was Big Data, but I particularly liked the way they sold it: “Big Data For Little People.” The basic idea being that much of big data is owned by big companies, which crunch the data for their own purposes. But the NPR folks are seeing a trend for applications that crunch big data and bring the results to your smartphone or other app.
A new report released by CAUSE is well worth reading: _Connecting Research to Practice in a Culture of Assessment for Introductory College-level Statistics, _www.causeweb.org/research/guidelines/ResearchReport_Dec_2012.pdf
Read it. We’ll discuss later. Pop quiz.
I haven’t yet read it myself (in my eagerness to publicize it as quickly as possible), but of particular interest to this blog is the role that data science plays, or does not play. For instance, Question 1 under Research Priority 1 is “What core learning outcomes employed in a particular profession do individuals need to develop in order to perform well in that profession (e.
Just read a great paper by Anna Bargagliotti in the current Journal of Stats Education, “How well do the NSF Funded Elementary Mathematics Curricula align with the GAISE report recommendations? “. The answer: it depends. Anna compares three math curricula designed to meet the Common Core Standards for grades K-12: “Investigations in Number, Data, and Space”, “Math Trailblazers”, and “Everyday Mathematics.” Anna compared them to the Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Statistics Education K-12 report, which, to quote her paper, “defines a statistically literate person as one who is able to formulate questions, collect and analyze data, and interpret results.
Participating in the “hangout” hosted by Jess Hemerly’s Policy By the Numbers blog was fun, but even better was learning about this cool blog. It’s very exciting to meet people from so many different backgrounds and from so many varied interests who share an interest in data accessibility. One feature of PBtN that I think many of our readers will find particularly useful is the weekly roundup of data in the news.
It is a happy day to be a statistician, as bloggers and columnists are bragging about many correctly predicted victories in an age in which traditional survey methodologies have been made out of date. Mark Blumenthal at the Huffington Post reminds us that one role of statistics is to temper personal bias. He gives a shout out to several pollsters, but I think Nate Silver at 538 is due special mention.
