The term ‘big data’ has been getting a lot of attention recently, some of it very complimentary (see ‘The End of Theory‘), and some of it not so much (see Mark Birkin’s report on a recent AAG session). On one level this is very exciting for me since much of my work with travel and communications data falls loosely under this rubric. But when big data sets are promoted as ‘the answer’ to everything from the next Census to deriving universal laws of human behaviour, it is also time for us to look a little more closely at what big data can actually deliver. Continue reading
