Database Design and Business Resources

Transforming data into knowledge

The Charleston Conference November 2013

Research materials in electronic form last 25+ years

Search has been available (close readings of texts)

Availability of data “Introduces fascinating research questions which could not be answered before.”

Let's start: analysis of 1.6 million book titles published in English from the French Revolution to 1915

Design enables data to become knowledge

Massive data sets in the Humanities

The titles of every British book published in English in and around the 19th century — 1,681,161, to be exact — are being electronically scoured for keywords- From the French Revolution in 1789 to 1915.

How does data become knowledge?

Key words and phrases that might offer fresh insight into the minds of the Victorians.

“God,” “love,” “work,” “science” and “industrial” — appear in British book titles from the French Revolution in 1789 to the beginning of World War I in 1914.

Test entrenched beliefs about the Victorians, like their faith in progress and science...

Initial data analysis

The increasing use of “hope,” “light” and “sunlight,” for instance, was interpreted as a sign of the Victorians’ increasing optimism.

Anxieties: understand measuring

Scholars express anxiety, however, about the potential of electronic tools to reduce literature and history to a series of numbers, squeezing out important subjects that cannot be easily quantified.

Revolution

Industrial

Religion

The VictorianCrisis of Faithand Secularisation

Sacred

Applying this to music data

Use of chart data:"Basically, I'm looking to run combinations of econometric models (think regression, but more advanced) and various machine learning models. These would all be completely custom designed for the data at hand."

"More specifically, I'm interested in trying to understanding the spread and development of culture (music being an interesting input to culture)."

Measurement - data sets

Statistical data aboundsRecord companies used to map marketing operations to sales results. Simple!

Now everything has an impact: from trends on twitter (being added to ACO) and YouTube successes (Gangnam from Korea via Berklee)

Additional data sets (2014)

Economic data from the IMF, World Bank and OECD to include

• GDP; unemployment; Inflation; Poverty rates; Direction of Trade; Balance of Payments; Home ownership

Twitter and other trending social media

Bringing together metadata and data

Some time honored ‘old rules’ still apply•Metadata is as important as data itself•Design requires elegance (not info-overkill)•Technology has turned 180%

Pre 2003 businesses led tech development Now consumer devices (smart phones) lead Academia needs these modern tools to thrive

Turning data into knowledge

As a summary, we find that extracting knowledge from data is the key.

Data on its own is unwieldy - we need tools to derive knowledge!

Some examples:

Impact of Grammys

Grunge vs. Michael Jackson, 90s

And other influences (Metallica)

MetaMet

And other influences (U2)

And other influences (U2)

And other influences (Natalie Cole)

New data + analysis = new research

If the Internet age has taught us anything, it is that analysis of data is the No. 1 priority for the next few years.

Put data and tools in the hands of users.

Data in STEM is expected. Now it is available in the humanities!