"Big Data" is one of those terms that gets thrown around my workplace with reckless abandon these days. So much so, that it begins to lose it's flavor. What does Big Data really mean? Certainly, we've seen a lot of lip-service paid to the sheer volume of information being generated on a daily basis (the Taming The Torrent video is a couple years old, but captures the gist of … [Read more...]
Subjective Objectivity
My wife recently underwent a surgical procedure. During recovery, the nurses would periodically enter the room to offer her pain medication. Each time, before they would give her the medication, they asked her to rate her pain and would refer her to a chart on the wall as a reference. You may have seen these charts - a series of cartoon faces that go from smiley on the left to … [Read more...]
When You Assume…
Recently, there was a post over at DiscoBlog on the Discover Magazine site that mentioned a study that claims that women who wax have better sex. It reminded me how quickly we can be led astray by settling on the first assumption. At first blush, one would assume that if you are a woman and you want to have better sex, wax. Reading the comments on the post showed me that the … [Read more...]