We've written about BIG data before and while some reckon it's sexy, you better roll up your sleeves because you'll invariably need to do a lot of 'janitorial' (a.k.a. shit) work first!
Ron Sandland recently wrote about the new phenomenon of 'big data' - weighing up the benefits and concerns. Terry Speed reflected on the same issue in a talk earlier this year inGothenburg, Sweeden noting that this is nothing new to statisticians. So what's all the fuss about? Here's another take on the 'big data' bandwagon.
As predicted in our pre-election post (see side-bar article "Taking the Stick (yet again) to CSIRO") the Abbott government has reduced CSIRO's budget by $111.4m over the next four years coupled with a $3.4m reduction from an increase in the efficiency dividend of 0.25 per cent to 2.5 per cent for each of the next three years. There were some pluses on the other side of the ledger sheet: $65.7m of additional funding over the next four years to operate the new Marine National Facility Research Vessel, the RV Investigator, and interestingly, a one-off funding of $32.2m in 2013-14 to support the management of staff cuts!
While the $20bn Medical Research Future fund is a welcome initiative (although the inequity of the funding mechanism itself is of concern), the overall hit to science is not. The total reduction in budgets to our major science agencies is almost 1/2 billion dollars.
Read Suzanne Cory's article "Judgement day for Abbott on science and research funding"in The Conversation here.
