Big Data
This phrase gets tossed around a lot today. Big data, at its core, describes large sets of data. What we hope to glean from this data is based on a simple idea, the more we know about a problem, the more likely we are to solve problems. This ultimately ends up looking like a great deal of complex analytics looking to better predict things, be it healthcare outcomes, purchasing habits, or even crime prevention. And while concerns exist about big data, those essentially revolve around concerns for privacy, discrimination, and security. But there is one more thing we should be concerned about.
I recently finished reading an interesting book called Sensemaking. This book’s tagline is “The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm” so clearly, this book is not going to be the largest fan of big data. Instead, this book looks at the idea of thick data.
Just as we discussed there are a variety of leadership styles that can work in various situations, there are different kinds of reasoning and they each have their own place. Deductive or algorithmic thinking is a way of thinking that is very logical, much like a math problem. The steps to getting a solution are clear and well defined. Any logical thinker can see the problem, approach it in this clear manner and come up with the same solution. Continue reading →