Using the Geoff West’s Scale as well as other sources from this semester (including your own personal investigation), how is the advent of data science serving to advance our understanding of complex adaptive, economic and social systems?

We are living in the world like “ever-accelerated treadmills”. It is a metaphor by Geoff West in Scale which attempts to reveal the fact that the unbounded growth from the human development will occur at an increasingly accelerating pace. The time gap between different “era” will be shortened and shortened: The time flows will remain the same pace, 1 second is 1 second; but when more works can be done per unit time, people’s internal and external demand per unit time is expanding to be fulfilled, which leads to a shorter time allowed for successive innovations or between different stages in the human development process to prevent the complex adaptive, economic and social systems from collapsed. Data science and its methodologies show up like a lighthouse in the whirlpool of the exponentially growing chaos and disorder in the society along with its positive development. Data science provides us not only tools but also ideologies to better understand this complex system as well as its process in the way of both statically and dynamically. Assisted by advanced technologies, a big data set offers us an unbelievable number of pieces of data and interpreted results with high qualities. What we attempt to gain from the data science, as Geoff mentioned, is the underlying order and trend, or the “simplicity” to the complexities in the world and the process of human development.

The Big Data era gigantically revolute the traditional science as well as this growing world. Rob Kitchin asserts that Big Data obtains phenomenal data set unlike data any other stages. He details that Big Data obtains a diverse variety of information by immense volumes and high velocity. Its characteristics like exhaustive in scope, fine grained in resolution, naturally rational and strongly flexible bring us into this exploratory science stage. By its strong and comprehensive features, it creates a radical shift in the perspective we treated scientific research and human development. Despite its functionality, Big Data and data science do provide us with a new data-oriented way to reveal trends and make predictions based on intensive statistical exploration. Scaling the process and results of urbanization by Geoff West is mainly supported by the dynamic data in various fields of socioeconomic factors in a wide range of cities. A countless, great time saving has been generated compared to traditional methodologies, which is superb significant in this accelerated world, where we are running with limited and decreasing time to not be trapped in the finite time singularity. The means of Big Data is necessary for its efficiency brought to adapt for the ever-increasing tempo in the world. Another great example will be its application on poverty assessment, where mobile data and satellite data is evaluated to be not only reliable sources, but also only accessible sources that can maintain accuracy in many remote areas where traditional census can be hindered by many factors like outdated data stored or local bureaucracy. It is this data intensive world that allows us to investigate a representative trend, a recognized “simplicity” epistemologically.

But people should not be too rash or hasty in case of putting the cart before the horse. Big data may supersede outdated data set, but does correlation good enough to supersede causation? Chris Anderson firmly believe that instead of establishing a firm logic or proved model behind the observation, in most cases it is enough to only have observed data or a simple correlation. And Big data is a representation of empiricism that directly tells you how things work by judging millions of correlated data and skipping the “understanding” or “proving part”. Although it sounds beautiful as it creates a time-saving and effort-saving world where people do not have to force themselves to gain more knowledges, it starts to deviate from its innate essential, which is to have greater understandings about this complex machine. Data is the tool to touch the underlying mechanism how the development proceeds and the world runs instead of running away from them. Just like Sydney Brenner’s words quoted in Scale, “We need theory and a firm grasp on the nature of the objects we study to predict the rest.”, this paradigm shift to Big Data should not make correlation dominates causation. Even if it is a correlation built up from millions of pieces of data, like West said, it can only be established after further investigation and the development of a mechanistic model. Moreover, Rob Kitchin asserts that the information of data does not appear and exist solely from nowhere. Big data will not automatically discover insights but based on scientific reasoning or hypothesis. From this perspective, intensive data mining is more likely an assistance to old theoretical scientific methodology. It is also essential to notice that data without appropriate interpretation is only a series of numbers or texts that will not speak for themselves and have little meanings. Knowledge and causation need to be valued for even in terms of interpreting data reasonably.

Joshua Blumenstock make his words about the data science and the Big data that they should be humbler and serve for the insight of the “simplicity” of the human development among the sea of trivial data fragments. It is far from perfection, omniscient and omnipotent. But still, data science is a great shortcut to achieve understanding the underlying laws how the society is developing and evolving, just like scaling and scalability to reveal the fundamental regularity in this world. The new era of data science should discover more 1.15x laws under the assistance of the Big Data to become closer to the nature of the human development and its process, freeing people and the society