Big Data: Six Links

Rising demand for big data expertise means rising salaries: “there’s now a war on for analytics experts and information management professionals who can ask the right questions and make use of vast and growing data stores. Need proof? How about a median total cash compensation for BI managers up 11.5% since 2010, to $135,000.”

Here’s why you need experienced data scientists:  4 Ways Big Data Can Trick You–Not representative; Things change, Know what data you’re looking at; Fallibility and bias.

Big data vs. privacy… the debate continues but here’s an example of how contributing personal data to Google’s big data pool may actually benefit all of us: Google Maps has added the ability to see the estimated time of your journey using real-time traffic data. Data is gathered through third-party services and through information from Android users who have opted in to the My Location feature on Google Maps.

Another potential contribution of big data to humanity (also dependent on individuals contributing personal data) was captured this week by Amazon making available 200 TBs of personal genomic data on the via its cloud. Play Data!

Big government data hug… summary of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)’s big data initiative announcement, investing $200 million in new technologies to manipulate and manage big quantities of data and use those technologies in science, national security, and education.

Decision-making on automatic pilot…in addition to the OSTP announcement, the DoD said that it will invest $250 million to “harness and utilize massive data in new ways and bring together sensing, perception and decision support to make truly autonomous systems that can maneuver and make decisions on their own.” How do you feel about the prospect of intelligent machines run amok?

Bonus quote of the week:  @jameskobielus  RT @fitzanalytics: “Big data allows us to be wrong with infinite precision” – Nicola Hughes