Posts

Posted on

07: How does Big Data convert into Business Value?

A topic that’s dominated our conversation in recent episodes of The Small Data Forum podcast is fake news and related issues.

In episode 7, hosted by Thomas Stoeckle in conversation with regulars Neville Hobson and Sam Knowles, we consider world wide web inventor Tim Berner-Lee’s call to action on what he sees as three big challenges for the web:

1. Loss of control of personal data;
2. Spread of misinformation; and
3. Questionable political advertising.


Continue reading “07: How does Big Data convert into Business Value?”

Posted on

06: Narrative versus fact – ‘asymmetric information warfare’

Episode 6 of the Small Data Forum podcast continues the discussion from our 2016 year-end edition, which focused on fake news, post-truth, and what John Naughton in the Observer called the ‘poisoning of our public sphere’.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, fake news was a main discussion point, with the Forum’s Global Future Council on Human Rights addressing governance issues around what is seen as an urgent matter of human rights.

In the UK, a parliamentary inquiry into fake news is under way, led by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. The BBC has set up its own unit to check facts and debunk fake news, technology companies such as Facebook and Google are driving initiatives to combat fake news in Europe, and Apple CEO Tim Cook recently stated that false information is “killing people’s minds“.


Continue reading “06: Narrative versus fact – ‘asymmetric information warfare’”

Posted on

05: Fake news, Google rankings and augmented intelligence

In episode 5 of the Small Data Forum podcast hosted by LexisNexis – our Christmas and year-end edition – Neville Hobson, Sam Knowles and I reflect on fake news and their distribution networks, the alleged gaming of Google search rankings, the promise of augmented intelligence and broad questions of how civil societies deal with the emerging and evolving challenges. Do we need more regulation? And who will regulate the regulators?


Continue reading “05: Fake news, Google rankings and augmented intelligence”

Posted on

04: Brexit, Trump and the challenge of better forecasting with better data

Our latest Small Data Forum podcast focuses on recent surprise political outcomes and the mechanisms at play: the psychology of predictions, the new phenomenon of fake news, echo chamber effects and the way data was analysed and interpreted.

Recent expressions of democratic political will – the UK referendum on EU membership, the US presidential election – have surprised most observers and commentators.

Both outcomes, ie Brexit and Trump, were not what most of the polling data indicated. This episode of the Small Data Forum is asking whether we should and could have seen this coming.


Continue reading “04: Brexit, Trump and the challenge of better forecasting with better data”

Posted on

03: Improving athletic performance – the growing role of data in sport

The 2016 Olympics in Rio was labelled the most technologically advanced games to date.  How are advances in gathering and analysing data being used to improve athlete performance?

LexisNexis recently published the third podcast in the Small Data Forum series, where I discussed the growing role of data analytics in professional sports with Neville Hobson, Senior Business Consultant at IBM and Sam Knowles, Founder & Managing Director of Insight Agents.


Continue reading “03: Improving athletic performance – the growing role of data in sport”