Electronic Proceedings of the Twenty-seventh Annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics

Las Vegas, Nevada, March 12-15, 2015

Paper A002

This is an electronic reprint, reproduced by permission of Pearson Education Inc. Originally appeared in the Proceedings of the Twenty-seventh Annual International Conference on Technology in Collegiate Mathematics, Copyright (C) 2016 by Pearson Education, Inc.


The Validity and Reliance of Big Data Projects

G. Donald Allen


Department of Mathematics
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843


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ABSTRACT

We put forth questions as to the potential problems with big data, their applications, and their implications in our world. Our particular interest is with distributed big data projects. The increase in available data has been occurring for centuries. One of the earliest big data practitioners, Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), used decades of Tycho Brahe's planetary measurements to render his laws. Modern projects now use masses of data that must be rendered with statistical or modeling tools by data engineers. These are among the latest innovative applications of computing. Of course, bigger and faster computers can and will push to new limits ordinary and well explored topics, and this will so continue for centuries. We are entered into a discussion about the use of computers to solve new, even revolutionary, problems of this world, particularly those involving big data. The problems themselves have become more complicated, often with no clear answer provided, and just as often without the problem even being well defined. We live in an age of wicked and impossible problems. We do what we can, but one clear problem, the one discussed here, is that offered solutions may lead us in false directions from which recovery may be difficult.

Keyword(s): applications