A perspective on ‘Big Data’

Fred Phillips

Science and Public Policy, 2017, vol. 44, issue 5, 730-737

Abstract: Many of the lessons learned with what passed for big data in the 1980s still apply today. The lessons have to do with deciding whether something is true or merely useful, the role of human creativity in posing questions, the treatment of hypotheses and the role of theory in data mining, skill development, and organizational dynamics. This essay details what has changed in the present era of ‘big data’, what has remained the same, what we may learn, and what promise the future holds. Important highlights include the role of executives in building a data-based decision culture, and the potential of big data for analyzing diversity rather than regression to means.

Keywords: big data; analytics; business intelligence; machine learning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/scipol/scx012 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:scippl:v:44:y:2017:i:5:p:730-737.

Access Statistics for this article

Science and Public Policy is currently edited by Nicoletta Corrocher, Jeong-Dong Lee, Mireille Matt and Nicholas Vonortas

More articles in Science and Public Policy from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().