The Question: How Big Is Big?
October 9, 2015
I recall one of my math teachers yapping about infinity. At the time, I did not care. My reaction was that as long as I could add a one to another number, I could just keep on going. Boring.
Later I became interested in the work of a German who did not drive a Volkswagen diesel. His name was Georg Cantor. As I worked though some of the articles discussing his thinking about comparing the infinite set of rational numbers with the infinite set of natural numbers by a rather brain dead procedure of listing and enumerating all the rational, I realized why the esteemed thinker fell into a programmer-type state politely described as mental illness. When he died in 1918, he thought about infinity and worried about the author of Romeo and Juliet.
I thought of the infinity thing when I read “Is Big Data Too Big?” Where some folks saw a legitimate question, I noted a lack of sensitivity to the perils of thinking about infinity. I assume the author wanted to avoid throwing himself into Joseph of Arimathea’s role in history, ordinality, and cardinality. As a result, the write ignores math and focuses on what I call business philosophy. Socrates, Nietzsche, and Russell were just so short sighted.
I noted this passage:
For major corporations the amount of data they can collect on each of us is vast. Indeed, estimates made about the amount of data collection show that the total volume of data in the world doubled between the start of this year and last month. By 2020 the amount of data in the world will be doubling every seven days. That is just too difficult to get our heads around…!
This exclamation mark approach is a good way to sidestep irritating mathy stuff.
I learned that big data can pose some psychological challenges. Cantor’s acquaintances would probably agree if they were still around and had a Facebook page.
But here’s the killer paragraph:
he vast amount of data and the ever-increasing number of reports causes another psychological issue of being overwhelmed. That leads to disinterest and lack of attention. And that, in turn, means we stop gaining from the data because we are not analyzing it properly. The more data we collect, the less valuable it can become because of our brains. As the article, How Can Big Data Trigger Positive Emotions explains, it is possible to make data interesting and appeal to our staff, but we have to work at it. If we don’t take steps to make data more psychologically engaging we are in danger of just producing data for data’s sake and not getting anything from it other than the desire to collect more data.
I agree. It is important to make numbers more psychologically engaging. Is there a downside? I keep thinking about Georg pondering that the power set of a countably infinite set is uncountably infinite.
Thus, is big data too big? Nope, big data can never be big enough because it will be bigger. Georg, Georg, are you with me on this?
Stephen E Arnold, October 9, 2015
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