[From Dick Robertson,2008.06.23.1142CDT]
Did anyone else see the article, “The End of Science?” in _Wired_July 2008?
They have a series, by different authors from different specialties, under this heading. The lead-in claims, “The quest for knowledge used to begin with grand theories. Now it begins with massive amounts of data.” The general thesis is that with Petabyte processing nobody gives a damn anymore about how things work; problem solving now consists of “casting nets” methods for predicting who will do what–based upon finer and finer slicing. “At the petabyte scale, information is not a matter of simple three- and four-dimensional taxonomy and order but of dimensionally agnostic statistics. It calls for an entirely different approach…that requries us to lose the tether of data as something that can be visualized in its totality…[but] to view data mathematically first and establish a context for it later.” [Whatever that means]…This is a world where massive amounts of data and applied mathematics replace every other tool…"
Best,
Dick R.
···
----- Original Message -----
From: davidmg davidmg@VERIZON.NET
Date: Wednesday, June 4, 2008 9:00 pm
Subject: CSG 2008 Annual Conference
To: CSGNET@LISTSERV.UIUC.EDU
Dear listmates:
The time for the CSG 2008 Conference is fast approaching.
The url for the confernece website is:
> http://csg-annual-conference.ihoststudio.com/
> Please register as soon as possible if you are coming.
Sincerely,
David M. Goldstein, Ph.D.
Current President of CSG
[From Fred Nickols (2008.06.23.1257 EDT)]
Well, I don’t know if it signals the “end of science” but it
sure looks like it might give it fits. I hadn’t seen the article but I’ll sure
take a look. Thanks for passing it along.
Regards,
Fred Nickols
nickols@att.net
···
From: Control Systems
Group Network (CSGnet) [mailto:CSGNET@LISTSERV.UIUC.EDU] On Behalf Of Robertson
Richard
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2008 12:55 PM
To: CSGNET@LISTSERV.UIUC.EDU
Subject: The End of Science?
[From Dick
Robertson,2008.06.23.1142CDT]
Did anyone else see the article, “The End of Science?” in _Wired_July
2008?
They have a series, by different authors from different specialties, under this
heading. The lead-in claims, “The quest for knowledge used to begin with
grand theories. Now it begins with massive amounts of data.” The general
thesis is that with Petabyte processing nobody gives a damn anymore about how
things work; problem solving now consists of “casting nets” methods
for predicting who will do what–based upon finer and finer slicing. “At
the petabyte scale, information is not a matter of simple three- and
four-dimensional taxonomy and order but of dimensionally agnostic statistics.
It calls for an entirely different approach…that requries us to lose the
tether of data as something that can be visualized in its totality…[but] to
view data mathematically first and establish a context for it later.”
[Whatever that means]…This is a world where massive amounts of data and
applied mathematics replace every other tool…"
Best,
Dick R.
----- Original Message -----
From: davidmg davidmg@VERIZON.NET
Date: Wednesday, June 4, 2008 9:00 pm
Subject: CSG 2008 Annual Conference
To: CSGNET@LISTSERV.UIUC.EDU
Dear
listmates:
The
time for the CSG 2008 Conference is fast approaching.
The
url for the confernece website is:
> http://csg-annual-conference.ihoststudio.com/
> Please register as
soon as possible if you are coming.
Sincerely,
David
M. Goldstein, Ph.D.
Current
President of CSG
[From Bill Powers (2008.06.23.1643 MDT)]
Has it really been that long since I posted to CSGnet?
It would be interesting to see what those specialities are that gave rise to this strange idea. I'll be it wasn't physics (other than quantum), chemistry, or their cousins. Or PCT.
Best,
Bill P.
[From Dick Robertson,2008.06.23.1838CDT]
[From Bill Powers (2008.06.23.1643 MDT)]
Has it really been that long since I posted to CSGnet?
It would be interesting to see what those specialities are that
gave rise to this strange idea. I’ll be it wasn’t physics (other than
quantum), chemistry, or their cousins. Or PCT.
Here, for what (if anything) it’s worth are the separate articles under that title:
The End of theory – Chris Anderson; Feeding the Masses – Ben Paynter (subtitle: The US Gov uses phone surveys to predict crop yeilds. A better way: analyze soil, weather, and satellite data.); Chasing the Quark – David Harris (To make information usable throw some of it away.); Winning the Lawsuit – John Bringardner (Lawyers now hire professional data-miners to dig for the dirt on corporate America’s hard drives.); Tracking the News – Adam Rogers (By monitoring online news feeds, governments can predict violence and spot disasters.); Spotting the Hotzones – Sharon Weinberger (Effective disease surveillance relies on speed as much as on information.); Sorting the World – Patrick di Justo (Leave it to Google to figure out a better way to manage huge data sets.); Watching the Skies – Michael Lemonick (Space is really big-but not too big to map.); Scanning our Skeletons – Thomas Goetz (Scientists aggregate millions of images to understand how we age.); Tracking Air fares – Cliff Kuang (Delve through billions of ticket prices to find out when to fly.); Predicting the Vote – Garrett M. Graff (Pollsters use large and powerful databases to identify political niches and target new supporters.); Pricing Terrorism – Vince Beiser (Extremist attacks are rare, unpredictable, and deadly, but insurers still must figure out what it costs to cover these incidents.) Visualizing Big Data – Mark Horowitz (If we could see everything ever written at once, how would it look and what could it tell us?)
There you have it. I never heard of any of these people, but that means nothing. Maybe some of them are worth googling. Here is a quote from the lead article that reveals the heart of the argument, I think: “Today companies like Google, which have grown up in an era of massively abundant data, don’t have to settle for wrong models. Indeed they don’t have to settle for models at all.”
Whatever,
Best,
Dick R
···
Subject: Re: The End of Science?