{"id":641506,"date":"2013-02-06T22:00:40","date_gmt":"2013-02-07T03:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=608132"},"modified":"2013-02-06T22:00:40","modified_gmt":"2013-02-07T03:00:40","slug":"why-big-data-matters-and-data-ism-doesnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/641506","title":{"rendered":"Why big data matters and data-ism doesn\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"

There has been something of a data backlash happening lately, and I think I\u2019ve figured out why: Data for the sake of data has a tendency to sanitize experiences we\u2019d rather leave a little bit dirty. But there\u2019s a big, meaningful difference that\u2019s worth knowing between big data\u00a0<\/em>and just plain data.<\/em><\/p>\n

David Brooks\u2019s recent column in the New York Times<\/em> is a good example of this. He coined the term \u201cdata-ism\u201d<\/a> (which is quite apt) to describe a newfound penchant for reducing everything in our worlds into a number or statistic. Skeptical of this data worship, he is \u2014 rightfully \u2014 inclined to rebel.<\/p>\n

But everything Brooks mentions in his article is really just statistics, the stuff academicians and businesspeople have been doing for years. It doesn\u2019t take any revolutionary technological advances to measure the effect of political spending on campaign results or the idiosyncrasies in how a president speaks. At the best, these types of analyses are enlightening; at the worst, they\u2019re overkill.<\/p>\n

Data can be an unwelcome disinfectant<\/h2>\n

Like Brooks\u2019 pointer to a study about whether there\u2019s such a thing as hot hand in basketball. Or a recent debate (that got an incredible amount of undeserved digital ink from Deadspin<\/a> and Nick Carr<\/a>) about whether to adjust the points and frequency of Scrabble tiles based on what letters actually appear most in the English language. Right or wrong, who cares?<\/p>\n

Unless you\u2019re a professional gambler or in the sports business, sports are supposed to be fun; an escape from reality. Buying into things like hot hands, sweet spots, ancient curses<\/a> and concern rays<\/a> (thanks, Dave Barry) are part of the rooting experience. If it wasn\u2019t for coaches\u2019 insistence on punting on fourth down<\/a>, I could watch an entire football game and not think about probabilites once.<\/p>\n

As for Scrabble, well, it\u2019s a game and it\u2019s fun. People like it as it is. What\u2019s next, lobbying to change the distribution of resource cards in Settlers of Catan to account for the relative value of each given recent drought conditions?<\/p>\n