What can science learn from Google?

I just read an interesting essay entitled "The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete" over at Wired, by Chris Anderson. Here's the link. He asks "What can science learn from Google?" Here are some excerpts:

"Sixty years ago, digital computers made information readable. Twenty years ago, the Internet made it reachable. Ten years ago, the first search engine crawlers made it a single database. Now Google and like-minded companies are sifting through the most measured age in history, treating this massive corpus as a laboratory of the human condition. They are the children of the Petabyte Age."

"This is a world where massive amounts of data and applied mathematics replace every other tool that might be brought to bear. Out with every theory of human behavior, from linguistics to sociology. Forget taxonomy, ontology, and psychology. Who knows why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves."

The essay general speaks to the intrinsic value of a data in vast numbers—that by listening to the data, you can predict a lot without an underlying theory. Models are continuously trying to catch up with data. While I'm not personally ready to abandon scientific theory, it's definitely an interesting theory in it's own right.

There's a feature over at Wired on the Petabyte Age, which you can read here.

I Suck at Math and I can't Draw to Save My Life

On more than a couple occasions, even around the studio, I've noticed how people are very quick to throw up their hands when they have to do math. Some people wear it as a badge..."I can't do Math!" Or maybe a bumper sticker—a statement that they are proud to hate math and just as quick to write off any possibility of getting good at it. Interesting enough, people are just as quick to say that they aren't good at art. Why do you think this is? In one regard, they both occupy the polar regions of the right and left hemispheres of the brain: pure creativity versus raw logic. I think it's interesting that people are so quick to freeze and give up when asked to perform an artistic or mathematical task when the brain is wired to do both. One theory is that most people have had a bad experience with a math or art teacher.

We already have a spokesman on the art side—our very own Peter H. Reynolds. He's the champion of ishful thinking and gets energized when people say they can't draw. Well, Danica McKeller (better known as Winnie Cooper of the Wonder Years) just wrote a book targeted at teenage girls that makes a similar claim, the title being Math Doesn't Suck. She has a website to go along with it, too. Who knew she was a mathematician? She's basically a proponent of teaching math using a conversational approach and is also trying to erase the stigma that girls aren't good at math. Sounds like a great cause to me!