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.
CSIRO CEO, Dr. Larry Marshall makes another extraordinary claim.
As if it wasn't enough of an affront for Dr. Larry Marshall to justify wholesale redundancies in its climate measurement and modelling work on the basis of the climate change phenomenon having been "proved", loose-lips-Larry is on the record as claiming the government determines what constitutes public-good research (click here to read and hear Paddy Manning's Background Briefing on ABC Radio National).
Larry - you can't be serious! Firstly, governments come and go (with monotonous regularity in this country) and with them, so too their priorities. Secondly, Larry's blinkered view essentially reduces to the simple equality: government priority = public good. So by this definition we condone Nazi 'research', the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and the CIA's LSD experiments?
Larry - it's time to move on. You haven't grasped the context and nuances of the environment in which you are operating. You've taken a grenade to CSIRO - unfortunately you tossed the pin!
