Sharing data, replicating results
First, a thread of thought. Second, a brief exhortation.
Summary:
- Chris Broadfoot showed some pretty amazing visualizations he had created using some open data.
- Mark Hahnel showed Figshare, which aims to help academics make their data open and available. He’s a big part of the open data movement.
- Flip Kromer, CTO of Infochimps, built the core technology that made sharing that data set possible, earlier on in the day. (And he kicked my ass in a German boardgame).
Why I’m optimistic:
- I see in Chris’ work was the opportunity for the public and decision makers to make very well informed decisions about transportation policy. Relevant.
- I see in Mark’s work was the opportunity for others to, with greater ease, replicate results, and to mash them up with other datasets in that corpus. We might end up all healthier and better off as a result.
- I see in Flip’s work was the opportunity for organizations to, with greater ease, replicate results and mash them up with other datasets.
Getting the evidence on the table is an absolutely essential step if analytics is to move beyond the opinion age.
These platforms, among others, are enablers.
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I’m Christopher Berry.
I tweet about analytics @cjpberry
I write at christopherberry.ca