Well that’s a good question, everyone is asking today what happened with the elections. Thinking that all that we knew and heard from media outlets was wrong. Big Data is subject to a few simple rules which often get ignored.
- Subjects (People) involved ought to be connected, i.e. they are feeding data into the machine.
- Subjects are willing to express their opinions. Without express consent of the individual, its questionable to correlate behavioral data, such as someone clicking on an article in favor of a Candidate to rule out that they vote for them.
- Interpretation ought to be accurate. All big data offers is a set of data points. Interpretation cannot be wishful thinking.
When the next election or event comes along, there is one thing to remember.
Big Data has a human side, do not forget it.