"Eruption" in the Big Data age: God never throws Dice

As long as we encounter incomprehensible things, we will say that it is accidental, it seems that this seemingly accidental action has contributed to the evolution of history, and the twists and turns of things seems to be like the dice. But what does this chance really mean?

And French mathematician Poisson points out that once we admit that human behavior is the most random, it can suddenly be predicted.

Paradox? In fact, one of the most appropriate examples is the dice: Although the number of points can not be predicted each time, but the overall law can follow. That is, about 5 to 7 times per roll will appear once 6, and throw 100 times is not the probability of 6 is almost zero.

Poisson's theory is the famous Poisson distribution in probability theory, while the famous physicist Barabasi in the "outbreak" to further make it clear that "human behavior 93% is predictable".

Well, when our emails are in the service provider's log; our phone records and whereabouts are in the carrier's storage; what we buy, taste and pay is in credit card records; All of our microblog, space, and personal homepage are simply displayed on the website ...

The existence of these records has detonated the personal privacy crisis, but it has also created an unprecedented historical opportunity – the first time that it has provided us with a detailed record of the conduct of tens of thousands of people, rather than a few, without prejudice. With these data and powerful computing techniques, physicists, psychologists and economists have been able to study some of the issues carefully. They have ample evidence that most of the human behavior is subject to regularity, and that their reproducibility and predictability are comparable to those of the physical sciences.

The findings are not just scientists, but some of these models and principles are worth hundreds of millions of, and companies such as Google and Yahoo, which track human behavior as business models, are expensive. It can be said that they reversed the universe. In the past, if you want to understand human behavior and ideas, you have to go to a psychologist certificate, but now, you may need to first get a computer science degree.

By extension, "no matter what, if the continuous collection of materials, a decade, the total can become a scholar", daily things will become the basis of this "outbreak." This means that time is our most valuable and irreplaceable source, and if we respect it, we must remove unimportant things, and only the priority list, the power law and the eruption you expect, will inevitably arise.

Similarly, "history will not repeat itself, but it has its own rhythm", if you can discern the law, then our future, perhaps in the hands of large data.

The latter part of this article is the book picks, extracts from Zhan lu culture "eruption--the big data age foresees the future New Thought", the author is the Global Complex Network Research Authority, the Neumann Prize winner Albert Laslo Barabasi.

The author may not be familiar with the general reader, telecom marketing expert Wang Yuquan even on Weibo: Gladwell's "tipping point" everyone can understand, became a super bestseller; Kelly "Runaway" most people do not understand, but everyone is a classic; Barabasi is the expert who really understands complex networks, his link The same system and grand, but no fame, this is why? Some netizens interpret it as the fast-food culture of the internet era, others think it is because of the writing features of Barabasi: A large number of examples, even look like novels, the conclusion needs to be summed up.

The main points of the book are listed above, with the contents of the book included:

The paradox of Poisson's

Poisson points out that once we acknowledge that human behavior is the most random, it can suddenly be predicted.

This seems to be a paradox: if unpredictability means contingency, how can contingency predict it? The answer is simple: Poisson's so-called predictions are different from what we pursue in our daily lives. Unlike Istvan Telegdi's predictions of the future of the Pope's crusade, his approach is more like Einstein's theory of atomic motion. Einstein knew that it was impossible to speculate on the trajectory of a single atom, so instead of assuming that the atom's motion was random, the distance from the release point was deduced to follow the diffusion theory.

Similarly, Poisson did not think about whether the jurors had made the right decision, but assumed that every juror voted like a dice: they were right most of the time, but occasionally they made mistakes, and we never knew when they were right and when they were wrong. On the premise of this hypothesis, Poisson uses the statistic data of conviction rate to derive the reliability of the whole jury system.

Although the next toss is a mystery, there is some kind of magical rule in this contingency. In spite of the obvious regularity, the Poisson process is actually a haphazard process, as it is the accumulation of a series of accidental events. Thus, deviations from Poisson's predictions often represent a hidden order, revealing a deeper pattern or model to be found.

It is true that many of the phenomena we observe are by no means accidental, such as planetary movement, unchanging day and night. But other phenomena, such as the weather, seem purely accidental. However, as Richardson has pointed out, the atmosphere is subject to a series of laws and equations. Now, meteorologists from all over the world are able to predict the weather by calculating successfully. Previously, many phenomena, such as eclipses, floods and droughts, were thought to have been dominated by the mysterious creator. But now these phenomena can be predicted by mankind. This tells us that deviating from randomness usually means that some basic law remains to be discovered by humans.

Big opportunity in the big data age

We are in a constantly changing but increasingly sophisticated state of being monitored. In fact, everything we do now can find clues in a database.

Our emails are stored in the email vendor's log file; Our call logs are tagged with a time stamp backup on the phone company's large-capacity hard drive; When and where we bought something, our preferences, tastes and ability to pay were archived by credit card providers; All of our personal pages, Space, Facebook files, and blog information are kept on multiple servers; Our immediate whereabouts are completely in the hands of our mobile phone provider; Our looks and dress are captured and recorded by the cameras in the major shopping malls and on the corner. Although we usually choose not to think much, our lives are in fact in tandem with the information recorded by the springing up of the database.

There is no doubt that the existence of these records has detonated the personal privacy crisis, and the seriousness of the problem cannot be overstated. However, it also creates a historical opportunity-the first time it has provided us with thousands of people, rather than a few detailed records of action, without prejudice. In the past few years, these databases have helped major laboratories, allowing many computer scientists, physicists, mathematicians, sociologists, psychologists, and economists to study certain issues with the support of powerful computers and new technologies.

The results of the experiment were exciting. They have ample evidence that most human behavior is governed by laws, models, and principles, and that their reproducibility and predictability are comparable to those of the natural sciences. The findings are not just scientists, but some of these models and principles are worth hundreds of millions of, and companies such as Google and Yahoo, which track human behavior as business models, are expensive. It can be said that they reversed the universe. In the past, if you want to understand human behavior and ideas, you have to go to a psychologist certificate, but now, you may need to first get a computer science degree.

Outbreak, the essential factor of the miracle of life

Life is far from smooth or random, rather, there are bursts at all times--from milliseconds to hours of cell activity, from minutes to weeks of human activity, from several years of illness, from thousands of to millions of years of evolution. The explosive type is the essential factor of the miracle of life, which shows that the creature struggles for adaptation and survival.

In the United States, whenever a 65-year-old or older person goes to a clinic or hospital, he or she is required to submit detailed records of their visits, including time, place and diagnosis, to the health insurance scheme. With the help of Nicolas Kristaski, my team got a 10-year record and summed up 2 million patients ' time to see a doctor.

When we have a disease depends on many factors, from our genetics to diet, exercise, smoking and drinking habits, to the nature of our work and the environment. So the day of sickness should be random and unpredictable.

If you accept that all human behavior is not random but explosive, then our findings on the medical history may be less surprising. But we did take a fright. You know, the urgency of a disease is definitely not based on a priority list. If we can give priority to disease as we wish, I'm sure everyone will put them directly at the bottom of the to-do list. By setting a low priority for the disease, we can guarantee that we will never get sick and have a healthy life. Sadly, this is not the case-the disease will "attack" us, and we will take our victims by surprise.

In general, basic science into practical applications requires a long way to go. The scientific miracle of the 20th century quantum mechanics has not played any practical role in nearly half a century, until the invention of the transistor to break the deadlock. Similarly, although the decoding of the human genome has triggered a medical revolution, all the drugs available in the market 10 years later have been developed by the trial and error methods used before the genome discovery.

On this basis, I was surprised to see that the eruption was moving so quickly from basic science to practical applications. In fact, you can understand the potential impact of this finding even if you don't have a ph. D. degree. Without saying anything else, they have at least facilitated a simple, undisturbed method of diagnosing depression. Do you feel depressed and all the symptoms show a potential emotional disorder? Then put on a watch that tracks your movements, and the doctor will give you a diagnosis to help you get rid of the impending depression.

Universally applicable explosive type

The more we find out that our body cells are prone to problems, the more we feel that it is a miracle that we can keep healthy often. But it is much less likely that two of proteins will find each other than the wonderful encounters you have with your best friend in New York, and you may wonder why our genes have been so successful.

You're not the only one who can't figure it out. Biologists have always been amazed at the ability of cells to coordinate many genes, proteins, metabolites, and RNA molecules that make up tissues. We know very little about the process, mainly because it's really hard to get a glimpse of the inner world of cells.

In another completely different era and field, Darwin speculated that the emergence of each new species was a gradual process, and that the number of different offspring of the existing species had to undergo a lengthy process. But the evidence of this continual change has not only been rare, even now, but Darwin called it "the most favourable retort to my theory".

In fact, fossils of millions of years ago showed little evolutionary change. Roughly every tens of thousands of years there is a new species, which is almost a moment of evolution. Evolution has a burst of history, which is recorded in generations of fossils. At the same time, these discoveries lead to a series of difficult puzzles. First of all, if it's not a decision or priority setting that generates a burst, then why does the eruption appear in so many systems? Can we explain this universality?

Recently, system biologists have developed a gene-activity model to capture the eruption points within human cells.

Knowledge also seems explosive, and a spark of inspiration may illuminate the chaos that has not been known for centuries. Once we find a solution, can we really solve all the problems or just raise more problems? These two questions are not contradictory, because many of the great changes in thought or science bring people more enlightenment than imprisonment.

(Responsible editor: Liu Fen)