They could certainly send 50 times as many messages, but they'll improve their return on investment if they target all of them at people who are more susceptible to their message in the first place. Given the cost of the Big Data systems they may only be able to afford to send 10 times as many instead of 50 times, but as long as their message is 5% effective instead of 0.1%, it's still a vast improvement on ROI.

That's a great question. Do you think 80% accuracy is good enough for medical use? If you're a doctor facing an unfamiliar situation, and your data says treatment X helped 40% of patients it was tried on, treatment Y helped 35% of them, and all other treatments (Z, W, etc.) helped no more than 30%, but you know the data might only be 80% accurate, what treatment do you choose? Are those ratios even meaningful in the presence of so many errors?

Consider the case where the patient's condition is critical, and you don't have time for additional evaluation. Is X always the best choice? What if your specialty makes you better than average at treatment Y? Maybe that 20% inaccuracy works in favor of the doctor who has the right experience.

It could it be used for ill, too. What if you know you'll get paid more by the insurance company for all the extra tests required to do treatment Y? You could justify part of your decision based on the uncertainty of the data.

In the end, historical data is just one factor out of many that goes into each of these decisions. Inaccurate data may lead to suboptimal decisions, so it can't be the only factor.

You seem to be belaboring this mistaken impression that analyzing Big Data somehow replaces thinking in the board room. It does not. Big Data is a tool that can help provide evidence of what people have done in the past, statistically correlated to potential causes. Big Data doesn't decide "hey, let's buy GM." People make those decisions, and they try to make them based on the information they have -- and Big Data can be a good source of that info. But people can be idiots, they can be talented, they can be anywhere on the spectrum. Do not blame the tool, or the accuracy of the tool, just because it's capable of being swung by an unqualified, incompetent idiot.

As a friend of mine is wont to say, "A fool with a tool is still a fool."

When you're dealing with statistics, you ought to recognize that 92% accuracy is a huge improvement over a random distribution. You do not use big data to select a target for a sniper rifle, you use it to point a shotgun.

And just like your faulty GM CEO analogy (I assume you felt the need to apply a car analogy for the benefit of the slashdot crowd) only an idiot would send someone off in the woods blindfolded and have him fire his shotgun in a random direction hoping to bring home some kind of food animal. You still have to know what you're hunting for, you still have to know how to hunt, you still have to make wise decisions. It's just a tool, not a sage.

The difference between "92% accurate" and "accurate enough for my task" are profound.

If you were using these kind of analytics to bill your customers, 92% would be hideously inaccurate. You'd face lawsuits on a daily basis, and you wouldn't survive a month in business. So the easy answer is, "this would be the wrong tool for billing."

But if you're advertising, you know the rates at which people bite on your message. Perhaps only 0.1% of random people are going to respond, but of people who are interested, 5.0% might bite. If you have the choice between sending the message to 10000 random people, or to 217 targeted people (only 92% of whom may be your target audience), both groups will deliver the same 10 hits. Let's say the cost per message is $10.00 per thousand views. The first wave of advertising cost you $100. The second costs you $2.17. Big Data, with all of its inaccuracies, still improves your results by a wide margin.

Way too often people like this point out that perfection is impossible. They presume that "because it's not perfect, it's useless." The answer is not always to focus on becoming more accurate, but to choose the right tool for the job, and to learn how to recognize when it's good enough to be usable. At that point you learn how to cope with the inaccuracy and derive the maximum benefits possible given what you have.

government sucks

it's just that the world sucks even more without it

congratulations, that's the most retarded thing i've read this year

I don't think this is related to the difference between special purpose use, or general purpose use. I think the problem is like anything else in education - parental involvement will increase children's learning. If the parent works with them to learn how to use the device, I'd bet their scores would go up, similar to a parent who reads to their child or helps them with math homework.

If the parent says "I don't have to teach them anything, the school gave them a computer for that", or "I can't teach them how to use the computer because I don't know how to use it", that child's education is going to suffer. Being computer-illiterate might simply be the current excuse for parents to ignore their children.

our healthcare system sucks because we tolerate these parasites on our system that have to "profit" for some reason. there's no competition. so they just siphon profit and buy off our legislators and regulators to keep the money train flowing

they are natural monopolies

they are monopolies alone, no government needed to make them

you don't spend billions to build a hospital across the street from another. there's no free market. we're not talking about nail salons

you don't go shopping for an oncologist based on cost. you don't shop around for hospitals while you are having a heart attack. there's no capitalism here

so we need government control, rather than make believing a magic free market fairy fixes things

i'm not a socialist or a statist. specifically on the topic of natural monopolies *alone*, universal payer is the least worst option

citation: all of our social and economic peers: uk, canada, japan, germany, australia, etc: they spend far less on healthcare, and have higher quality healthcare. and it's all government controlled

our bullshit system persists because our government is corrupted. we need to fix the corruption, then kick out the parasites

the lawyer seeks out the victim

if you ever are the victim of a newsworthy accident/ crime, you will get cold called by a number of lawyers, who want to represent you pro bono

because such cases gild their CV, get their name out there. free advertising

some lawyers, they seek out interesting strange and noteworthy cases only. out of ego, fame, crank cause, adrenaline, hero complex, whatever:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

etc.

you mean you're a hopeless idealist who think things have to be perfect?

i'm glad you agree we need to get rid of corruption

but i'm mystified how you think the country's obvious success has nothing to do with democracy, however imperfectly implemented

i've been commenting on slashdot for years. there's always this steady drip of comments from grammar (punctuation?) nazis like yourself. do you see me changing or caring?

if you don't like the formatting of my comment, don't read it. i don't owe you anything. you're not paying me

this is an informal comment board, not a doctoral thesis. get over yourself

yes, exactly

and that's exactly the next step with a weakened government: corporation owned armies abusing you with no recourse for your rights

oh, i'm making that up? it's science fiction?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

By the early 1890s, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency employed more agents than there were members of the standing army of the United States of America.

During the labor strikes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, businessmen hired the Pinkerton Agency to infiltrate unions, supply guards, keep strikers and suspected unionists out of factories, as well as recruiting goon squads to intimidate workers. One such confrontation was the Homestead Strike of 1892, in which Pinkerton agents were called in to reinforce the strikebreaking measures of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, acting on behalf of Andrew Carnegie.[citation needed] The ensuing battle between Pinkerton agents and striking workers led to the deaths of seven Pinkerton agents and nine steelworkers.[4] The Pinkertons were also used as guards in coal, iron, and lumber disputes in Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia as well as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921. The organization was pejoratively called the "Pinks" by its opponents.

now remember dick cheney and his adventure with blackwater

weaken the government and blackwater expands exponentially, and corporate goons are now stepping on your throat: "get back to work slave, i mean citizen. if you have a problem with our enforcement activities, please see the corporation owned courts, or attempt to fight our legion of well-funded lawyers when you can barely get enough to eat, because we've let 'the market decide' your salary"

you look around the world at kleptocracies, warlords, mafias... you really fucking believe government has a monopoly on force?

if there is no government army, it's not suddenly peace and happiness, it's fucking hell

where do you morons come from with your bullshit unexamined beliefs?

we have competing ambulance services here in the usa too

but they will take you to a further away hospital they have financial agreements with (fuck your actual health emergency)

and if you don't have insurance you get a life destroying huge bill (because health insurance is a "choice")

agreed (with the european part, fuck your grammar demands)

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...