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Foreign Policy, By Gil Press, October 8, 2012
After surveying a number of data scientists about their favorite Internet destinations and excluding websites of companies developing and selling Big Data technologies, I've selected ten sites that explore this information revolution in interesting and innovative ways. By visiting them, you'll get a chance not only to play with Big Data but also to learn more about this much-hyped phenomenon and its potential impact on society.
Is the U.S. presidential campaign drivel making you hungry for facts? Data.gov, which was launched by the Obama administration as part of its Open Government Initiative in 2009, offers access to data generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Enterprising government agencies and private citizens have built on the site's hundreds of thousands of data sets (and other sources) to help you find everything from the most on-time flight between two airports to the latest product recalls.
I know what you're thinking. You, too, would like to get in on the Big Data payday, if only you had some "computing for data analysis" skills. Or maybe studying improvisation with a renowned jazz musician is more your speed. Coursera offers these and 196 other online courses from top universities for free. But unlike other initiatives that simply make classroom lectures available on the Internet, Coursera has developed an educational platform at Big Data scale.
Last month, sports fans in the Big Data world could ease their frustration with NFL replacement referees by turning their attention to Kaggle, the people who "make data science a sport." The site allows users to participate in competitions, show off their data science skills, and even win fame and fortune. ...
Other sites mentioned include:
- Recorded Future, mining the web to find predictive signals for political and social events
- Indeed.com, With over 80 million unique visitors and 1.5 billion job searches per month, Indeed.com knows a lot about where jobs are and which are in high demand
- DataMarket, hosting thousands of data sets from a wide range of public and private sources