Comments on: Big Data Models: Help me crowdsource sources

By: gary demos

gary demos — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:36:08 +0000

Kevin Kelly

By: Richard Volpato

Richard Volpato — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:57:43 +0000

David,
Check out the *World Values Survey* – it’s not as big as the mega data aggregations that are possible via government sources, but it is packed with interesting and topical material with a vast coverage. It is based on good old fashion surveys across 150+ countries and spanning 30 years. So for example when you hear about Islamic attitudes to sex (in the press) you can tabulate responses to a battery of questions on the topic comparing the group of interest versus the ‘rest’ – over time, age groups, income, education etc etc. Pretty quickly you see just what a rich mosaic of diversity exists within, let alone between, groups we stereotypically imagine to be different to each other and homogeneous in themselves. See: http://www.wvsevsdb.com/wvs/WVSData.jsp and http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/

By: tori

tori — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 19:23:08 +0000

I suggest you interview Nathalie Miebach. She is an amazing speaker working with huge climate data sets. Her work and insights are extremely worthwhile and her sculpture is stunning!

http://www.nathaliemiebach.com/statement.html

She most recently presented to our group of scientists at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and I can’t recommend her highly enough.