Topical news and op-ed articles

  • 2012-08-02 | O'Reilly Radar | Alistair Croll | Big data is our generation’s civil rights issue, and we don’t know it
    Data doesn’t invade people’s lives. Lack of control over how it’s used does. What’s really driving so-called big data isn’t the volume of information. It turns out big data doesn’t have to be all that big. Rather, it’s about a reconsideration of the fundamental economics of analyzing data.
  • 2012-07-10 | Reason.com | Ronald Bailey | Stopping Crime Before It Starts
    Op-ed noting that while predictive policing helps police protect citizens, it could also be used to oppress them.Draws on the work of Andrew Guthrie Ferguson (see papers under the research tab) to comment on how predictive policing might affect Fourth Amendment protections (protection against unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported
  • 2012-06-30 | BBC | West Yorkshire Police predict crime spots using data
    Favorable news report about pilot project in West Yorkshire. Police claims a 65% reduction in burglaries in a specific area over the first five weeks of the project, compared to the same period last year.
  • 2012-03-16 | SIAM.org | Dana Mackenzie | Predictive Policing
    Tracks history of the mathematical ans statistical models behind predictive policing, with a focus on CompStat (Computer Statistics/Comparative Statistics) and the later academic developments in Los Angeles and Santa Cruz that will emerge as PredPol
  • 2012-03-01 | CACM | Samuel Greengard | Policing the Future
    News article reporting on ongoing trials of PredPol and CRUSH.
  • 2010-08-21 | Los Angeles Times | Joel Rubin | Stopping Crime Before It Starts
    Sophisticated analysis of data can sometimes tell police where criminals are headed. It's academic now, but the LAPD plans to get involved.
  • 2010-06-23 | NIJ Journal | Beth Pearsall | Predictive Policing: The Future of Law Enforcement?
    For years, businesses have used data analysis to anticipate market conditions or industry trends and drive sales strategies.
  • 2009-11-01 | PoliceChiefMagazine.org | Charlie Beck and Colleen McCue | Predictive Policing: What Can We Learn from Wal-Mart and Amazon about Fighting Crime in a Recession?
    In the current economic climate, police departments are being asked to do more with less. New tools designed to increase the effective use of police resources could make every agency more efficient, regardless of the availability of resources.
  • 2008-06-26 | Ars Technica | John Timmer | Why the cloud cannot obscure the scientific method
    A response to of the claims by Chris Anderson (Wired Editor-in-Chief) that big-data let us dispense with theory.
  • 2008-06-23 | Wired | Chris Anderson | The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete
    Sixty years ago, digital computers made information readable. Twenty years ago, the Internet made it reachable. Ten years ago, the first search engine crawlers made it a single database. Now Google and like-minded companies are sifting through the most measured age in history, treating this massive corpus as a laboratory of the human condition.