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U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

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Re: U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

#91

Post by fullsend »

wolverine876 wrote: post #84
fullsend wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s exactly what universities are these days. They sell a signal that says “this worker can do the bare minimum you need” called a Degree. We make the worker get certified themselves, but this is the purpose. To act like modern Universities do anything else today is disingenuous in my opinion. It’s like saying people who work in finance are there to allocate capital efficiently. No, they’re there to make money. Th…

It's a popular meme but IMHO does not reflect university-level analysis. That exists, but reductionist arguments merely take the worst of someone or something and blow that up to 100%. For example, everyone feels self-interest, but the reductionist claim it that it's all we are. A simple look at the evidence shows that it's manifestly untrue; people are much more than self-interested. Similarly universities do and ar…

True, the reductionism is no good. I guess to me I’m tired of discourse that leans towards “universities are places where we make you a complete human”. The real state of things is more what I describe, with a dash of making you deeper. Not vice versa.

Re: U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

#92

Post by random314 »

avidphantasm wrote: post #61
nonrandomstring wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's kind of like a very boring video game for adults that makes them feel like they're working, Absolutely love it. Let's distinguish a few things though. "Data science" seems like a pretty weird name. I mean, it's just "Science" right. Of course there's statistics, mathematics, signal processing, systems analysis, machine learning... all the good things that you and I are into. But how does this get huddled uncom…

Agree that the term data science is strange. Data engineer seems like a better name. Science implies rigorous hypothesis testing guided by a theories of how particular systems work. Not sure that applies to most “data science” work.

Data science is perfect because an actual science doesn't have the word science in it namely physics, chemistry and biology.

Instead we have social science, computer science and now data science.

Re: U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

#93

Post by wolverine876 »

fullsend wrote: post #91
wolverine876 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a popular meme but IMHO does not reflect university-level analysis. That exists, but reductionist arguments merely take the worst of someone or something and blow that up to 100%. For example, everyone feels self-interest, but the reductionist claim it that it's all we are. A simple look at the evidence shows that it's manifestly untrue; people are much more than self-interested. Similarly universities do and ar…

True, the reductionism is no good. I guess to me I’m tired of discourse that leans towards “universities are places where we make you a complete human”. The real state of things is more what I describe, with a dash of making you deeper. Not vice versa.

I agree it can go too far the other way too. People come with many different motives and experience many different things.

> I’m tired of discourse that leans towards “universities are places where we make you a complete human”.

I'm surprised that's said much. I see the reductionism as the mainstream; when I say otherwise, I'm 'politically incorrect'. On HN, certainly the reductionism is much more common. Isn't what you quote now the outsider view?

Re: U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

#94

Post by astrange »

wolverine876 wrote: post #67
xwolfi wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's simpler: imagine you're the NSA and decide to transcribe every phone call ever made to text: you'll spend gazillion in storage, connectivity and processing for the capture, and spend a gazillion squared on post-capture text analysis to find "something", like "who is communist in Atlanta", and not even be able to make it find the communists pre-emptively, before it's too late and they already donated $3 t…

I expect Facebook can easily identify most communists are in Atlanta.

Well that’s easy, you just look up who lives in L5P and Decatur.

Re: U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

#96

Post by nerdponx »

a9h74j wrote: post #48
McSinyx wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> degrade student and staff privacy That's the primary value to be captured right there! Their privacy is highly valued, monetarily: > authors contend that universities have been slower than organizations in other _economic_ sectors Education in the US is just pure business.

Make of it what you will, I just saw on the project censored website that protecting student data is seen by some as a major priority. The article seems more PII and cybersecurity focussed, rather than recognizing the threat of intentional monetization. https://www.projectcensored.org/ferpa-and-higher-ed-should-p...

This is about digital security, i.e. protecting data from unauthorized access and use. It says nothing about protecting students themselves from surveillance and abuse by their own institutions.

Re: U.S. universities, rich in data, struggle to capture its value, study finds

#97

Post by civilized »

porknubbins wrote: post #83
civilized wrote: post #28

As a data scientist, I think most data is useless, but there is an addictive, video game-like quality to throwing lifeless spreadsheets into a machine and having colorful visualizations come out. It's kind of like a very boring video game for adults that makes them feel like they're working, when they're actually just enjoying colorful abstract shapes and colors. To be honest, this is probably a sizable piece of why…

You perfectly described why I became disillusioned with any kind of data science job. The feeling that most of the time data is used to support preexisting bias and can be arranged to say anything you want. Interesting that you know this and enjoy it despite that.

Thankfully I work in an area where data science has clear fundamental value to the business.
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