01 Jun Decoding the Internet's Raw Data
There’s no shortage of uses for the massive amounts of data in every nook and cranny of the Internet.
Advertisers want to mine the photos and status updates you post on Facebook to better sell their wares. Scientists want to track weather patterns based on decades of climate records to better forecast troubling storms. And White House officials now want to make government data sets available for citizens to use however they see fit.
The problem is figuring out how to organize and display the data in a useful and informative way, instead of forcing people to sift through heaps of mind-numbing spreadsheets. When are bar graphs and pie charts enough to break down a set of numbers? What is the best way to display flu outbreaks, cellphone call logs or senators’ voting records?
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