6 years, 11 months ago-
Hi there! I’m Federico, nice to meet you. I was fascinated by the first meeting and I recognize that this experience will be a great opportunity for all of us.
In my opinion, the weakness of Big Data is the statistic data. This tool allows to analyze data in order to obtain an estimation that can’t guarantee us an exact result. Instead the top pros are the applications of this tool in marketing analysis and digital innovation. We have different successful examples about Big Data usages in marketing like to know preferences of each user. On the other hand digital innovation is a limitless field where everyone should invest in it.
I know there are more pros and cons but for me these are the ones to be highlighted.
@leonardo I imagine schools where every student has to do extra homework according to their needs and extra lessons to fill the gaps, all recommended by Big Data, in addition to the mentioned application in the article.@federico Even though exact accuracy is not possible with the use of big data, it still presents probably the highest precision you can get, especially for statistics. And I’m pretty sure marketing analysis is done (at least part of it) through statistic data.
Also, I’m not sure if you see the schooling system presented by the article as positive or negative. But everyone is (luckily) unique. So I think what you mentioned about extra work or lessons would be a good thing, if it helps the individual develop his true potential. We grew up with a school system (I’m talking primarily of the italian one) that has been heavily criticized for treating all students the same way.
From what I understood, the accuracy of the use of big data we saw in the Trump’s case (being it true or not), is thanks to sociology study, not statistics… Using the data of someone to study them not through statistics but trough their behavior. I think it’s different from normal statistics tests where you get a group of people and study their behaviour through certain kind of stimulation… The way it’s used is personalized, creating something specific for each person… I think we can see it as a substitute to statistics because instead of studying the percentage of people that behave in a certain way, you can make accurate profiles of each single person…
@carlos what you say is true, but deciding if a certein behavior determines a certain trait of your personality isn’t a statistic? But I never actually said that Big Data was used solely for statistic, and I never affirmed that Trump’s case implies that. I said that Big Data can be used to get important and precise results even for statistics.
But I’m not completely sure, I’m just making an assumption based on what I learned during this discussions.
@Leonardo, that’s true… What I was trying to say is that it’s a kind of evolution… I mean, the data Kosinski used to study people’s behaviour came from statistic studies from people before him that created the base for psychometrics. Now, psychometrics is used to study big data… So they came from studying many to understand their behaviour and create some measurement and now they use that metric to study each singular person… And actually the statistics on its base is really evolved… I have found an interesting group of descriptions of psychometrics that looks interesting: https://www.psychometricsociety.org/content/what-psychometrics … The more we talk about it the more I find it fascinating 😁
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Hi everyone!
My name’s Lorenzo, and I really like the psychology aspect that this article is bringing in front of us. I think it’s unbelievable how Big-Data algorithm can describe our personality in this deep way, It’s even more precise than what we think about ourselves!
From one hand this encourage me, because it’s like a beginning of a new era for the Computer Science, but from the other, this scares me a bit, because of data-control. In this article, we read, that “every like” that we post in Facebook, every word or phrase that we search on Google, and basically every data that we leave on the Internet (and not only online) can reveal something big or little, sensible or not about us. Here, the problem is on my opinion: “who can read our data? And what it’s going to do with that?”I tried to think about some pros and cons from the use of big data. What do you think guys?
Pro:
Big Data as a tool to personalize the student’s path based on his interests;
Big data as a security tool, monitoring people with “dangerous” personality;
Big data as a tool to personalize human interaction with the world (maybe through new technologies like the smart watches or all the stuff coming out these days, when you enter a store maybe you can already be directed to the area of your interest, or maybe if you looked for a product on internet, when you are near some place where you can find it you can receive some kind of notification, etc);
Big data as a tool for companies to study new trends and be more responsive towards the market;
Cons:
Complete loss of privacy;
Risk of a dictatorial society based on Big Data Analysis decisions (maybe drastic but not that much);
Human factor (for example even if the analysis decides that someone’s personality is dangerous, it doesn’t mean that that person really is dangerous;
The idea that all human behaviour can be explained by statistic studies (It’s kind of the same as the previous, but i like to enphazise the fact that no one can predict everything about humans);
The fact that there will always be someone that will find some way to use our data in a wrong way;
Having everything personalized towards your interests, limits the possibility to find new interests (if when i’m navigating, if i only see things that are of my interest, i may lose new stuff that could come up just seeing random stuff as everybody usually does);
@carlos I agree with all your points. Just a clarification: you’re saying that personalization of human interactions with the world and personalization of a student’s path can both be pros and cons? Since I see you pointed that out in the last con. I mean, if a student has his path decided by an algorithm, it could prevent him from choosing his own path and his own interests. The same applies for interactions with the world.
@Leonardo yes, the last con was more generic, so it applies to a student also. What i mean is that if you already have everything personalized, you can lose the ‘curiosity’ to search for something new. Also because if everyone has everything personalized (speaking of students), you will probably meet people with interests similar to yours more often than other people with complete different interests. For example, if i hate sports, my interactions will probably be more with people that hates sports than with people that love sports, and that maybe will stop me from discovering a sport that i could eventually like… I don’t know if i’m explaining myself well… Hope you will get it anyway…
About the human interactions with the world, i meant a pro different from the con… The pro was about actual interaction, like going to stores and find easily stuff that you are searching for, or having reminders of stuff wou searched online as you pass in front of a store or other stuff like that… I’ll try to make an example:
Imagine that you are looking online for a new laptop. You look on amazon, ebay, media world, etc, and find a computer that you like, but not for an affordable price… Then maybe weeks pass and you are just passing in front of a store and you get a notification saying that in that store, on that moment, there si a sale off and the computer you liked weeks beefore is now 50% off… Even if maybe you forgot to keep looking around…
Instead, the con i meant is, for example, if you love dark chocolate, everytime you go to a store (stores like i said before, where you enter and are brought exactely where you need) you are brought to where dark chocolate is… And so, you’ll never see a white chocolate, and maybe never taste one and discover if you like it or not. Obviously, going to a supermarket you could go around and discover things, but what i mean is if you keep following the path that is given to you, you will always see the same things and you can’t “try something that you don’t even know that exists”… I know it’s a stupid example, also because you will surely pass beside a white chocolate before you find the dark one, but i hope i could give you an idea of what i was talking about…
@carlos Yes, I understand what you mean now. It’s possible that something like that could happen, but I hope whatever future awaits us, it won’t be completely controlled and decided solely by a machine analysing me and my data. I believe the cons are far stronger than pros. The only pro I find incredibly useful would be crime prevention, but even here (like you mentioned for Minority Report) there’s the human factor.
@leonardo I forgot to tell you that I am convinced it is a good school system, I gave another hint on the future of big data applied to schools and I agree on what you said on the Italian school system, could also try to implement here systems such as the one mentioned in the article.
@carlosfilho I agree on every point except the last. What you are referring to, I think, is for lazy people who are satisfied with what is proposed without taking into account the search more thoroughly. I’m sure each of us (computer science students but not only) will never stop at the first found information, he will seek to deepen its research, finding links to other topics that will expand his horizons. However I’m not talking about targeted searches and your explanation about the last point certainly demonstrate that I’m talking about particular cases, not the general ones… by the way, nice and large list of pros and cons, I have no further points to add right now.I think we came up with a pretty pessimistic point of view 😂
I’m still thinking about it to see if I can find more pros and cons… It’s getting interesting… Do you think we can find at least one use for Big Data analysis without side effects?
I found this that seems veeery interesting while i was reading something on the internet
“Perhaps the greatest argument in favor of real-time analysis of big data is that it may be used to provide cutting-edge healthcare. Proponents of big data point out that healthcare organizations can use electronic medical records and data from wearables to prevent deadly hospital infections, for example. To these proponents, privacy cannot trump the lives big data might save”
@riccardo That’s very interesting. Could you maybe link the entire article?
About that sentence, maybe it’s true that lives can be saved through Big Data, but that decision is not a single individual to make. The lost of any form of privacy is something incredibly important, and it should be decided by everyone. I mean, if they asked with a referendum to decide between keeping privacy or losing it to help people, than I would be satisfied with whatever the outcome is. But if a small group of individuals make that decision for us, it will all be pointless.
That’s my opinion at least, I hope I was able to explain myself.
@leonardo the article is very short and its just a list of pro and cons
this is the link : https://www.ciklum.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-big-data/
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