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.
New Report on Ecosystem Report Cards April 4, 2014
'Report Cards' and their associated scoring techniques are widely used to convey a measure of overall ecosystem health to a wide audience. However, as with most things, developing, testing and validating these metrics is not straightforward.
Environmetrics Australia was commissioned by the Gladstone Healthy Harbour Partnership (GHHP) to review statistical methodologies underpinning the use of environmental indices. Our report "Statistical Issues associated with the development of an ecosystem report card" is available for download fromGHHP's website or from our own Download page (under 'Miscellaneous' heading).
A key component of our review identified drawbacks associated with current practice for deriving indices using water quality measurements. An alternative procedure was subsequently developed and a technical paper describing the methodology has been accepted for publication by the Environmetrics Journal. A layman's abstract can be found here.
