My Comment on Jay's Post on how Big Data could impact Social Science
The West's indulgence with quantitativeness has to an extent brought to fore the most exemplary outputs in the landscape of empirical research. But at the same time every thing in this world cannot be predicted with 100% accuracy through complex data & Mathematical models. And a philosiphical basing of social scientists comes in handy to predict things out of their gut feeling.
But the fact is that none of these two extremes could give us what we need, ie., forecasting an imminent danger (a political event) for an example. Recently I have read an introductory book "Understanding Big Data" to try and understand what it actually means? To my surprise the Pioneer - IBM tacitly concludes that it is only the prudent application of Big Data Platform which may bring in new business insights not otherwise. So Big Data is going to be here for some time and might produce great results for business organizations to an extent through its valuble insights which otherwise may not be possible. But to say that it is going to be the panacea to all the problems which are encountered while forecasting/predicting political events or any other governmental business may not be a realistic assertion. So overall I agree with your outlook and the middle grounnd you have embraced.
I must say that your work on forecasting political coups is truly Seminal. I am yet to complete the reading in full.
Thanks
Sathya
Blog : paytriat.blogspot.in
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