How the Information Revolution Will Impact How We Live and Work

The rise of big data and advanced analytics represents a profound change in both how we understand the world, make decisions and act on those decisions. In a recent paper by Ericsson, the authors capture some of the significance when they note,

“In contrast to digitalization, which enabled productivity improvements and efficiency gains on already-existing processes, datafication promises to completely redefine nearly every aspect of our existence as humans on this planet. Significantly beyond digitalization, this trend challenges the very foundations of our established methods of measurement and provides the opportunity to recreate societal frameworks, many of which have dictated human existence for over 250 years.”

Advanced data analytics can be interpreted as simply how we manage our world in an age of complex systems. It offers the possibility of actually seeing and understanding the complex systems that now run our world, from transport networks to social networks to cities and global supply chains. With complex data analytics, we actually have the possibility to manage these systems in a new way.

Sean Gourley founder of Quid states it clearly when he says,

"We live in a very complex world, there are 7 billion minds now, and those 7 billion minds have created a world that not one of them can understand and yet we still have to make decisions we have to decide whether or not to sent troops to Iraq and we have to decide what to do about climate change and we have to decide how to deal with a global financial market that doesn't want to stay still."

In this course, we will be looking at these four aspects of Big Data Analytics technology:

1. Data Analytics Basics

2. Big Data Fundamental Concepts

3. Advanced Algorithms

4. Smart Systems

Here's a summary of what we will be discussing.

Big Data Analytics

In the first section of this engineering PDH course, we give an overview of the domain of complex data analytics, touching upon many of the major themes that will be expanded upon during the rest of the course. Then, we are going to lay down a basic understanding of what we mean by the term analytics or data analytics. Finally, we will see that complex analytics enables us to answer complex questions.

Big Data Fundamentals

In the second section, we will discuss the meaning and implications of Big Data. 

The term Big Data implies an increase in the quantity of data, but it also results in a qualitative transformation of how we store and analyze such data. We examine the details of this concept in this course.

We will see that the implicit premise of big data is that decisions can be made wholly based upon computerized models, shifting decision making from people to data and formal models. We learn about Dataism, the general underlying philosophy of big data, which holds that data is a primary source of truth, free of human bias or framing. We will give our viewpoint on whether or not this purist view is entirely true.

Finally, we will conclude this section of the course by presenting the fact that today, with the rise of information technology, we have gone from a world that was private by default, to a world that is public by default and, where, it takes extra effort to ensure privacy.

Advanced Algorithms

In the third section, we discuss the many ways algorithms have an increasingly material impact on society. From the rise of algorithms has come machine learning, a disruptive technology which used in a range of computing tasks where designing and programming explicit algorithms with good performance is difficult or not possible. 

Machine learning is a challenging area of computer science and engineering where many approaches to building intelligent systems exist. We will give an outline of 5 different approaches. We will dive deeper into the details of artificial neural networks which are computing systems inspired by the biological neural network of the brain. We will also present the workings of Deep Learning, a machine learning method based on neural networks. 

For better or worse our world is in the midst of a silent algorithmic revolution. Many of the decisions that humans once made are being handed over to mathematical formulas.  At the end of this section of the course, we talk about what algorithms can and can't do.

Smart Systems

In the final section of the course, we will discuss smart systems and how they incorporate the functions of sensing, actuation, and control in order to analyze a situation and make decisions.

We will see how the platform model will be important in developing smart solutions to almost all types of technologies in the coming decades.

We will learn of the inherent risk related to handing over an extraordinary amount of power to these automated algorithms. We conclude the course with a discussion of the future of the relationship between machines and human-machine relationship.

SOURCE:  Shutterstock