Readings: Big Data

I read the Wired article first and got really depressed until I got to the Gonzales paper. I tend to agree with Gonzales more on Big Data, in that yes data tracking supersedes some of our previous methods but that it is still important to have human researchers that can provide context. In particular:

Only when the data are assembled in the right way, by focusing on the signal and disregarding the noise, can we build a story that makes substantive sense.

Anderson doesn't agree for the necessity of theory and models to help explain data but I still side with Gonzales that there needs to be a subjective approach for us to truly understand the data especially when it comes to Social Science. Even in the hard sciences, I don't understand Anderson's example of the research "discovering" new species that he knows nothing about. What is the point of having "a statistical blip - A unique sequence that, being unlike any other sequence in the database, must represent a new species?" I would imagine one would need to know the details and not just be satisfied with a vague statistic that there probably is something. Did we send a rover to Mars to look for water or were we satisfied with the statistical probability that there would be water? It may not be completely related, but I saw an interesting article last week about the use of "small data," mainly in content-based apps like Netflix and Tinder. The author talks about how we can't handle large deluges of data and instead respond better to "card-based" types of apps where we're presented with a series of simple information.