February 6, 2012 at 9:15 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Feedback and Big Data
February 6, 2012 at 9:16 pm
"How do we improve the way we do things? We measure them, observe, make a change based on our observation, measure again, and then repeat, looking to make our process, product, or idea better over time."
This time-honored approach is called "tinkering." And it works.
February 7, 2012 at 1:22 am
Good article.
Revenant (2/6/2012)
"How do we improve the way we do things? We measure them, observe, make a change based on our observation, measure again, and then repeat, looking to make our process, product, or idea better over time."This time-honored approach is called "tinkering." And it works.
It's also called science, and it's the way to do it also in my mind.
February 7, 2012 at 7:53 am
I learned the scientific method in about 6th or 7th grade. It was pounded into me by Sister Brendan again in 8th grade. I was so under-impressed then, but over time have found the knowledge invaluable and made sure my kids learned it when they were coming of age. I employ the thinking method as often as I can, it has served me well as a programmer and a DBA.
February 7, 2012 at 8:05 am
"Culture", is a particular company's collection of practices, In other words, “The way we do things around here.” To change the culture in any company, the change has to be embraced from the top down, period. Otherwise, the change will just get overidden by management when the first crisis arrives. Changing things at just the lower level, is useless IMHO. I have never seen that work long term. You have got to have management "buy in" all the way from the top down. Granted, that might be easy to get at first, or maybe not, but it's keeping that "buy in" through the long run, that is the challenging part. . 😀
"Technology is a weird thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other. ...:-D"
February 7, 2012 at 8:11 am
Implicit in this iterative approach is the need to allow time for experience between iterations. A grand goal cannot be acheived instantaneously by throwing more money at it. Trying to jump too far too fast will generally result in failure or worse, lost opportunity to do it right when locked into a short sighted choice. This is often overlooked in politics when a drastic goal such as energy independence is proposed.
Apple could not have jumped from the II to the iphone no matter how much money they had. Ted Nelson had a brilliant glimpse of the future with Xanadu, but neither he nor anyone else saw ubiquitous smartphones, Google, Facebook, or any of the other things which have fundamentally changed our existence.
Even farther back, Watt's steam engine was a gadget to make coal mining better, but it freed up easy energy and changed the world in ways he never could have imagined.
But it all takes time. And a lot of smart people to look at the results of each iteration and ask, 'how can we do it better?'
...
-- FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers --
February 7, 2012 at 9:03 am
Thanks, Steve, this editorial, though brief, gave me lots of food for thought. I don't want to get too philosophical, but for some reason (maybe the fact that part of the diagram looks like a pentagram 🙂 ) I thought that the whole universe can be considered as playing out a huge data calculation. That's not my idea, many others with far more intelligence have already thought of it. But one thing I hadn't seen discussed before is the concept of whether each piece of matter is unique, or to use data terms, has a "primary key." I know any given electron must be, in theory, the same as any other. But is there any way in which they are in fact unique in our particular cosmological configuration? Some complex combination of their origin, current state, location, etc.? I don't know enough about quantum mechanics to know whether two electrons can occupy the same exact place and the same exact time, but if they can't there is some built-in uniqueness even if we can't yet measure it.
Anyway, I figure the universe as a whole is about as big as big data can get. But I wonder whether the biggest challenges for handling big data will come not from storage capacity but from processing speed. Now that people see the patterns and discoveries that can come from analyzing big data, they're going to want to get those results faster and faster.
Just my two cents.
- webrunner
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A SQL query walks into a bar and sees two tables. He walks up to them and asks, "Can I join you?"
Ref.: http://tkyte.blogspot.com/2009/02/sql-joke.html
February 7, 2012 at 9:10 am
webrunner (2/7/2012)
Thanks, Steve, this editorial, though brief, gave me lots of food for thought. I don't want to get too philosophical, but for some reason (maybe the fact that part of the diagram looks like a pentagram 🙂 ) I thought that the whole universe can be considered as playing out a huge data calculation.
Isn't that Foundation? (http://www.amazon.com/Foundation-Novels-ebook/dp/B000FC1PWA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1328631009&sr=1-1)
😉
February 7, 2012 at 9:15 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (2/7/2012)
webrunner (2/7/2012)
Thanks, Steve, this editorial, though brief, gave me lots of food for thought. I don't want to get too philosophical, but for some reason (maybe the fact that part of the diagram looks like a pentagram 🙂 ) I thought that the whole universe can be considered as playing out a huge data calculation.Isn't that Foundation? (http://www.amazon.com/Foundation-Novels-ebook/dp/B000FC1PWA/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1328631009&sr=1-1)
😉
Could well be -- I haven't read the Foundation series. I did also see the same concept in a nonfiction book that I just started - Programming the Universe by Seth Lloyd. But if the Foundation idea is the same, then that is some seriously Big Data. 🙂
- webrunner
-------------------
A SQL query walks into a bar and sees two tables. He walks up to them and asks, "Can I join you?"
Ref.: http://tkyte.blogspot.com/2009/02/sql-joke.html
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