Data Science for Social Good, a data science fellowship personally bankrollled Google chief Eric Schmidt, has commenced for its second summer. The fellowship sees 48 fellows (selected from a pool of 300 candidates) come together “to tackle problems that really matter.” Partners this year include World Bank Group, City of

Intel is spearheading projects to improve food and water security in California. California is a particularly apt place to start; agriculture in the region is a $46.3 billion industry, and they’re world leaders in avocado and almond production. But they’re also facing a devastating drought; nearly one third of their

The hype around the term “big data” can be pernicious. The ubiquity of the term, coupled with a lack of understanding about what it actually means, often leads to overly-ambitious expectations of what big data projects can actually achieve. This week, guest contributor Jamal Khawaja aimed to clear the fog

We recently reported on how Netflix is using big data algorithms to power its recommendation system; now, a Netflix blog post highlights other ways in which the company is using big data behind the scenes to enrich its service. They’re putting the data to work largely to improve Quality of

Tailored retail experiences are one of the most well-known applications of big data. We have premium streaming sites that know what you want to watch next better than you do; book vendors which can accurately map your literary tastes; and now, an e-commerce lingerie startup which knows if you suffer

Representatives from the Punjab Information Technology Board have spoken about their unlikely secret weapon in the fight against dengue fever; mobile phones. Dengue fever is an international blight. Over 100 million people catch the mosquito-borne disease each year. It’s been nicknamed “breakbone fever”, due to the horrific pain it inflicts

The on-going Big Data media hype stirs up a lot of passionate voices. There are naysayers (“it is nothing new“), doomsayers (“it will disrupt everything”), and soothsayers (e.g., Predictive Analytics experts). The naysayers are most bothersome, in my humble opinion. (Note: I amnot talking about skeptics, whom we definitely and desperately need during any period of maximized

Kickstarter is using big data to simplify its approval policy for new campaigns. As well as shortening its list of rules and requirements, the Kickstarter team have announced the beginning of ‘Launch Now’ button, bypassing the human approval round normally required to launch a Kickstarter campaign. Instead, illegal and ill-thought-out

Gerrymandering in the US is a serious issue. The Washington Post estimates that as a result of gerrymandering, the Democrats under-represented by about 18 seats in the House, relative to their vote share in the 2012 election. Brian Olson, a software engineer from Massachusetts, has devised a programme which works

For the uninitiated, the Big Data landscape can be daunting. The vast proliferation of technologies in this competitive market mean there’s no single go-to solution when you begin to build your Big Data architecture. In this series of articles, we will examine the Big Data ecosystem, and the multivarious technologies