A_Martin Exercise 1.2
Week 1 Reading Questions
“Data Dimension: Accessing Urban Data and Making it Accessible” by Nabian, et al.
- The authors talk about privacy concerns with big data, and for good reason. I wonder if there are any privacy concerns even when data is generated from scratch. Typically, the data’s creator(s) is the owner, but surely there is a line for the generation of data about other people, right?
- To what extent is the public involved in the generation of data? For instance, in the Tigard air quality experiment, was the public involved in selecting indicators? Collection methods?
- How long has this kind of study been done? I know that in other forms of social science, there end up being standard methods, particularly involving the parsing and reconciliation of multiple data sources. Have we reached that point with urban analysis? Are we starting to get there?
“A Human-Scaled GIS: Measuring and Visualizing Social Interaction in Barcelona’s Superilles” by Speranza
- Who are the players involved in initiating data collection like what we saw in this article? The city? Non-profits? I imagine that process could get rather political outside of academia.
- How do we control for variations in subjective data day to day? I imagine there are carefully worded rubrics, but even so, differences in individual perception could definitely show up in the data. Do we manage this statistically? Or by having the same person do the same measurements every time?
- Looking at the circle charts gives me a sense of the overall presence/lack of certain indicators, but I’m not sure I understand what proximity to the center indicates. I wonder if we could go over all of the data that is baked into these charts.