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162 – Celebrating 30 Years of the Survey of Consumer Finances
Delving into Megadata: Evolving Challenges
Turkan Gardenier
Pragmatica Corp.
John Stark Gardenier
Independent
In parallel with rapid advances in computer technology, databases in multiple disciplines have increased in number and magnitude. Interactive features of retrieval now enable the user to query data for a specific geographical location, for a specific time interval and for specific demographic or age groups. Yet, during this process of delving into such "megadata," exploring linkages among multiple variables which relate to health and environment raise challenges. For example, analog data which are summarized into daily measurements, giving rise to time dependence between successive observations, averages being used for displaying one attribute versus ranks for another, unequal time intervals between successive data. Integrating displays from Geographical Information Science (GIS)oriented maps with tabular summary data also generate further challenges. Researchers, clinicians and those involved in personalized medicine will benefit from this presentation. Resolution-related issues which need to be recognized and implemented during the process of fine-tuning inferences and conclusions will be addressed.