Preface: Big Data is Not About the Data!

Citation:

Gary King. 2016. “Preface: Big Data is Not About the Data!” In Computational Social Science: Discovery and Prediction, edited by R. Michael Alvarez. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Copy at https://tinyurl.com/y4ruxa6k
Chapter157 KB
Preface: Big Data is Not About the Data!

Abstract:

A few years ago, explaining what you did for a living to Dad, Aunt Rose, or your friend from high school was pretty complicated. Answering that you develop statistical estimators, work on numerical optimization, or, even better, are working on a great new Markov Chain Monte Carlo implementation of a Bayesian model with heteroskedastic errors for automated text analysis is pretty much the definition of conversation stopper.

Then the media noticed the revolution we’re all apart of, and they glued a label to it. Now “Big Data” is what you and I do.  As trivial as this change sounds, we should be grateful for it, as the name seems to resonate with the public and so it helps convey the importance of our field to others better than we had managed to do ourselves. Yet, now that we have everyone’s attention, we need to start clarifying for others -- and ourselves -- what the revolution means. This is much of what this book is about.

Throughout, we need to remember that for the most part, Big Data is not about the data....

Last updated on 05/21/2016