Schoenberg: Analyzing large data with humanistic attitude

Schoenberg

Viktormayer-schönberger, the author of the Great Data age, and Professor Victor Mayer Schoenberg of Oxford University, today delivered a keynote speech on "Big Data Industry 4.0" at the 2014 Pujiang Innovation Forum.

Schoenberg that the nature of the world is large data, big data is opening up a major transformation of the times. The way that big data is changing life and understanding the world is becoming a source of new inventions and new services. It is the key of large data that the thinking change from causality to correlation, and the prediction based on relational analysis method is the core of large data.

The contents of the main lecture are as follows, partially abridged.

When we talk about the background of big data and innovation, it goes back a century ago that Henry Ford gave birth to the Ford model and started a new era of mass production for automobiles. This not only changed the automobile industry, changed the economy, but also changed the whole society, changed our sense of distance and time and space. Before we had Henry Ford and his Ford models, and now we have an Apple Watch coming on the market.

In this context, how to define "innovation"? Ford models are mainly related to mass production, the lowest cost of a certain type of production volume. Fast forward to the present era, Apple Watches will have thousands of different configurations, and low-cost production, can be simple mass production, but also personalized mass production.

Personalized mass production, become a symbol of modernization. "Innovation", we see from the mass production to personalized mass production of the era, we have a negative idea. In fact, innovation is a better way to analyze and understand what is happening in the world. In human development, through understanding and observation to innovate, and through observation and capture information to deepen understanding.

We have recently started talking about "small data" because the cost of collecting, analyzing, storing, and using data is very expensive and time-consuming. Now we see ways and means to understand the world, based on our inability to understand the big data correctly, and the background is changing.

Big Data gives us a new experience of reality

We collect and analyze savings data, and then change the process of data analysis, changing the way we understand the world. From 1989 to 2010, 20 years, the number of global data has increased 100 times times, we see the explosive growth of data, we are moving from the analog world to the digital world or the digital world. Why is that? Because quantity can be turned into quality. For example, we take digital photos, every second a man riding a picture, if you burst 20 of photos, you can suddenly see the number of changes to bring a new quality leap, this is our new observation and experience of reality, this is the data brought about by the changes in the number of information growth, can bring us new insights into the world of change.

Two, big data help us to better understand the world

The data and related problems are the starting point for us to observe the world. In other words, let the data speak, let the data help people see the world, and let the data help us understand the world better. For example, the choice of focus when taking pictures, which is the most important to focus on, but not important to become a vague background? At this point, we will know what is more important to us in the data age. With a large data camera, you can capture all of the focus points, and after you have taken the photos, you can choose any one of the focus objects. The advantage and strength of a large data camera is that it allows data to be spoken, combining disparate data. By analyzing the relationships and associations between these data, you can find a causal relationship between the events.

Three, big data innovation change every aspect of life

In the 50 's, the Pentagon wanted scientists to create a software that would automatically translate Russian into English, which ended up costing 1 billion of dollars and 15 of years, culminating in failure. And now a start-up in California, using the Internet as a basis, to create statistics, probability, to build a successful translation machine. The results of using large data innovation are better than any previous research on machine translation.

In the area of health, a PhD uses large data to put digital sensors into preterm infants, and then collects key information that is relevant to his vital signs, including his blood pressure and heart rate, which can pass more than 1200 related data in a second. Over time, they began to look for patterns and laws that could be used to predict the future of the child's infection, associated diseases, and to help health care workers give them better medical attention.

Iv. reusing data for greater value

There is a lot of value in the innovation of big data, but the most important thing is to get more value in the data that has been used. Previously, we used it according to the usefulness of the data, and then discarded the data. But now it's not: we're going to use the data over and over again, like an iceberg, and we see only the tip of the iceberg, and the most important value of the data is hidden beneath the water we can't see.

The Seattle Venture company uses data repeatedly to help people avoid traffic jams on their commute. They have apps, called hot maps, that show different colors depending on the traffic jams, and 100 million people use the app every day. Where does this data come from? Every smartphone user is a sensor, and when you're walking or driving, the smartphone has the data transferred out and calculates the best way to go. These data can be duplicated, and the public sector can use the data to better understand public transport conditions.

The company (Rolls-Royce), which has been providing engines for aircraft for a long time, left a lot of data on the engine's sensors, which were discarded after use, but now they have collated the data to prepare to predict which parts of the engine are about to fail, Maintenance and replacement of parts can be carried out in advance according to the forecast results. Therefore, the company's service sector grew rapidly, service creation accounted for the total revenue of 17%.

Doling Company, developed a learning English smartphone application. They collected all the data and found ways to analyze the way people used to learn English, such as the way Spanish people learn English is different from Chinese learning methods. They use cloud computing services, do not need high costs, do not need to build a manufacturing base, do not need to build factories, and do not need to build Google database so large database.

In the modern world, the physical scale is not so important, it is important to have the ability to collect data, the ability to analyze data, from the data to get ideas.

Analysis of large data in a humble and humane manner

What is the next trend for large data? With the big data, we can certainly learn more in the future, we will become healthier, life will be longer, cars will not need drivers ... However, the big data is clearly limited, and we must be very careful in the next step to master large data technology in a very prudent manner. It is very important that we learn from the large data.

In addition, we should focus on areas that are beneficial to humans, which is the difference between people and computers. We should be more humble and humble is a very good trait. Data is often incomplete and imperfect, and when we do large data analysis, we do not only do it with humility, but also analyze big data in a humane manner.

This paper is organized by Shizhiliang and Lu Yu