[Applause]
what do you see more than a million
pixels on screen most of them various
shades of orange and brown and yet in a
moment your brain can put together a
cohesive picture of the information that
it needs a million dollars worth of
technology every computer vision machine
learning trick ever invented cannot as
reliably as quickly and as efficiently
get to the same conclusion put together
the same picture and yet your brain can
take these millions of individual pieces
of information build the individual
patterns put them together into a
cohesive model about the world around
you and say to you in no uncertain terms
danger run this is what our brains do
they take collections of individual
facts and they build around them a way
of understanding the world I’m a data
scientist and that’s kind of a fancy
buzzword term for someone who uses
computer tricks to try to replicate some
of the same things I take a collection
of individual facts or data and I try to
build from them a way of understanding
the world a way of creating knowledge
from those facts and systematically
doing so is referred to as data analysis
and today this is how we communicate
with the world this the buzzword de
vivre around this particular object is a
dashboard now while the individual data
visualizations haven’t really changed in
the past 75 years even though the
artistic quality has markedly improved
the way that we communicate is still
this same approach this is seen not only
as the pinnacle of the way to
communicate the knowledge that we’ve
learned from data from this collection
of facts it’s also seen as its terminus
this is how we know we’re done
this is how we are trying to get to this
is the thing that we’re trying to
accomplish once we’re here we’ve done
our job we’ve answered the question I
don’t want to just answer individual
questions anymore I want data science
and data analysis to be able to build
explorable worlds that take advantage of
our humanity the build to work within
the capability of humanity to explore
and to collaborate and to engage
humanity in its best way and the way
that this works is through data
applications a date application is
anything but static it allows a person
to walk around in a world to see
something maybe new to pick something up
to understand something from a different
perspective to see something new and a
completely familiar light or to see
something familiar in a completely
different light to investigate something
you didn’t even know that you wanted to
understand to be able to interact and to
collaborate to contribute your wisdom
your capability to contribute your
humanity into data science into your
ability to understand the world around
you I think it’s appropriate that we
refer to these as dashboards because as
dashboards they’re like the dashboard in
your car you glance at it from time to
time to answer a specific question but
how fast am I going do I have enough gas
is the engine running at the appropriate
speed or are the oil and the water both
still there but they aren’t the purpose
of the car the purpose of the car is to
go somewhere the purpose of the car you
you don’t drive a car with your eyes
affixed on the dashboard you drive your
car with your eyes out the windshield
exploring the world around you I don’t
want to build a better dashboard I want
to build a windshield and I want to
begin with what is possibly the central
grand challenge of humanity medical
research
so medical research has largely
unchanged over the past several decades
an experiment is designed data is
collected it’s processed it’s analyzed
it’s written into an article it’s
published in a journal someone else can
read that article and understand what’s
in that journal and yet if you start to
tear those pieces apart what we are
talking about is a given journal is a
collection of individual facts that are
right to be explored this particular
gene is associated with this protein
this other protein when it is in
abundance causes a reduction in this
particular syndrome and the associated
metadata around it this particular
experiment was done on a hundred
subjects all of them were mice this
other experiment was done on twelve
subjects they were human it’s been
replicated three times that is an
incredibly rich data set that needs to
be capable of exploit and it would be
easy very easy to look at some of these
to look at this type of data to
summarize it in something like a
dashboard answer a few basic simple
questions but to do so would be lie what
could be possible if a researcher could
truly explore the overarching world that
was created
we took an incredibly tiny sliver of
medical research and built a data
application around it specific to only a
few hundred articles restricted within
neurophysiological research around
post-traumatic stress a stack of
research maybe yay high if you were to
print it out which we didn’t but no
researcher remotely has time to read all
of that much less be able to understand
it and explore it and yet we started
with data visualizations and made an
explorable world where one person may
want to know what is directly connected
and what is directly found someone else
may want to know what is indirectly
connected through pathways of unrelated
or seemingly unrelated concepts while
one person may be interested in
understanding
species at which an individual research
topic was conducted someone else may
actually be interested in establishing
the replicability to understand
causality the point was not that an
application was capable of answering
those questions
it’s that it didn’t know those were
going to be the questions asked it
simply allowed exploration and allowed
the person that was using it to go and
pick up a piece of data and look at it
through the lens of their domain
familiarity it allows somebody to answer
questions whether or not they even knew
what they really wanted to do specific
purpose or no Harebrained Schemes
passing ideas they all pet theories even
could have the same capability that only
years ago would have required hours
hundreds and thousands of hours of
relentless focus and now these things
can be asked easily and vividly only
because we were able to trigger
humanity’s capability and want for
exploration it eight applications are
only about exploration they’re also
about another very powerful aspect of
humanity which is collaboration and for
inspiration around the capability of
engaging humanity’s collaboration I want
to turn to probably the most successful
the most famous collaborative data
application in history Wikipedia
now Wikipedia as a data visualization is
incredibly easy to understand it’s just
text you read like a book but as a data
application its capability was around
facilitating effective collaboration the
underlying technology just allows
multiple people to create and edit
documents that’s all it does and yet
perhaps it’s fitting that the first
thing we did with it was create one
giant document to collect and organize
the entirety of central human knowledge
now Wikipedia on its own is impressive
enough and there are these fantastic
visualizations that have been put
together how if
Wikipedia were printed out like a
standard encyclopedia and the volumes it
would be the size of a small motel but I
don’t want to I want to put Wikipedia in
its entirety to the side for just a
moment and I want to concentrate
entirely on one tiny corner the part of
Wikipedia related to star trekkin now
I’m going to deviate for just a moment I
want to tell you about the first edition
of the encyclopædia Britannica when the
Encyclopedia Britannica was first put
together it took years of editing and
writing to bring together a number of
sources from science history and
literature together into what they
referred to as a dictionary of all human
knowledge
the first edition when it was published
was just shy of 2,400 pages the part of
Wikipedia currently related only to Star
Trek is approximately 12% larger III can
feel you I can feel you I promise saying
to yourself how depressing that is what
a waste of our potential of our
attention of our capability but I am NOT
going to let this story off the hook
that easily
we built a collaboration capability we
built an ability to cognitively
collaborate and organize knowledge that
was so efficient and effective that one
of the things we did with it was we
catalogued an entire base of human
knowledge larger than the entirety of
collected human knowledge just a few
generations ago about a relatively
trivial television show but we did it
together
in our spare time for free that is not
depressing that is inspiring now whether
or not you are willing to grant me the
decisively generously way I would need
to refer to the Star Trek Wikipedia
portal as a Grand Challenge of humanity
I will unapologetically label as such
the ability to cognitively collaborate
in such an efficient and effective
manner that it could exist our brain
centrally are capable of creating
knowledge from fact creating an
understanding of the world from data and
as we systematically do this we will be
able to take on challenges everything
from the Grand Challenges of humanity
all the way down to the daily mundane
challenges of modernity when we can
engage the best of humanity with
technology we can solve anything so
Marty McFly’s father was right
when you put your mind to it you can
accomplish anything and humanity when it
is engaged and when it is capable of
exploring when it’s capable of
collaborating this is what humanity does
best humanity by its nature is social we
love to work together to solve problems
big and small humanity is curious we
love to learn about new things no matter
whether it is cataloguing exactly how
many red shirts were killed in the
original series 43 or understanding the
intricacies of the human mind humanity
is ambitious in all things let’s run
with that thank you
[Applause]
what do you see more than a million
pixels on screen most of them various
shades of orange and brown and yet in a
moment your brain can put together a
cohesive picture of the information that
it needs a million dollars worth of
technology every computer vision machine
learning trick ever invented cannot as
reliably as quickly and as efficiently
get to the same conclusion put together
the same picture and yet your brain can
take these millions of individual pieces
of information build the individual
patterns put them together into a
cohesive model about the world around
you and say to you in no uncertain terms
danger run this is what our brains do
they take collections of individual
facts and they build around them a way
of understanding the world I’m a data
scientist and that’s kind of a fancy
buzzword term for someone who uses
computer tricks to try to replicate some
of the same things I take a collection
of individual facts or data and I try to
build from them a way of understanding
the world a way of creating knowledge
from those facts and systematically
doing so is referred to as data analysis
and today this is how we communicate
with the world this the buzzword de
vivre around this particular object is a
dashboard now while the individual data
visualizations haven’t really changed in
the past 75 years even though the
artistic quality has markedly improved
the way that we communicate is still
this same approach this is seen not only
as the pinnacle of the way to
communicate the knowledge that we’ve
learned from data from this collection
of facts it’s also seen as its terminus
this is how we know we’re done
this is how we are trying to get to this
is the thing that we’re trying to
accomplish once we’re here we’ve done
our job we’ve answered the question I
don’t want to just answer individual
questions anymore I want data science
and data analysis to be able to build
explorable worlds that take advantage of
our humanity the build to work within
the capability of humanity to explore
and to collaborate and to engage
humanity in its best way and the way
that this works is through data
applications a date application is
anything but static it allows a person
to walk around in a world to see
something maybe new to pick something up
to understand something from a different
perspective to see something new and a
completely familiar light or to see
something familiar in a completely
different light to investigate something
you didn’t even know that you wanted to
understand to be able to interact and to
collaborate to contribute your wisdom
your capability to contribute your
humanity into data science into your
ability to understand the world around
you I think it’s appropriate that we
refer to these as dashboards because as
dashboards they’re like the dashboard in
your car you glance at it from time to
time to answer a specific question but
how fast am I going do I have enough gas
is the engine running at the appropriate
speed or are the oil and the water both
still there but they aren’t the purpose
of the car the purpose of the car is to
go somewhere the purpose of the car you
you don’t drive a car with your eyes
affixed on the dashboard you drive your
car with your eyes out the windshield
exploring the world around you I don’t
want to build a better dashboard I want
to build a windshield and I want to
begin with what is possibly the central
grand challenge of humanity medical
research
so medical research has largely
unchanged over the past several decades
an experiment is designed data is
collected it’s processed it’s analyzed
it’s written into an article it’s
published in a journal someone else can
read that article and understand what’s
in that journal and yet if you start to
tear those pieces apart what we are
talking about is a given journal is a
collection of individual facts that are
right to be explored this particular
gene is associated with this protein
this other protein when it is in
abundance causes a reduction in this
particular syndrome and the associated
metadata around it this particular
experiment was done on a hundred
subjects all of them were mice this
other experiment was done on twelve
subjects they were human it’s been
replicated three times that is an
incredibly rich data set that needs to
be capable of exploit and it would be
easy very easy to look at some of these
to look at this type of data to
summarize it in something like a
dashboard answer a few basic simple
questions but to do so would be lie what
could be possible if a researcher could
truly explore the overarching world that
was created
we took an incredibly tiny sliver of
medical research and built a data
application around it specific to only a
few hundred articles restricted within
neurophysiological research around
post-traumatic stress a stack of
research maybe yay high if you were to
print it out which we didn’t but no
researcher remotely has time to read all
of that much less be able to understand
it and explore it and yet we started
with data visualizations and made an
explorable world where one person may
want to know what is directly connected
and what is directly found someone else
may want to know what is indirectly
connected through pathways of unrelated
or seemingly unrelated concepts while
one person may be interested in
understanding
species at which an individual research
topic was conducted someone else may
actually be interested in establishing
the replicability to understand
causality the point was not that an
application was capable of answering
those questions
it’s that it didn’t know those were
going to be the questions asked it
simply allowed exploration and allowed
the person that was using it to go and
pick up a piece of data and look at it
through the lens of their domain
familiarity it allows somebody to answer
questions whether or not they even knew
what they really wanted to do specific
purpose or no Harebrained Schemes
passing ideas they all pet theories even
could have the same capability that only
years ago would have required hours
hundreds and thousands of hours of
relentless focus and now these things
can be asked easily and vividly only
because we were able to trigger
humanity’s capability and want for
exploration it eight applications are
only about exploration they’re also
about another very powerful aspect of
humanity which is collaboration and for
inspiration around the capability of
engaging humanity’s collaboration I want
to turn to probably the most successful
the most famous collaborative data
application in history Wikipedia
now Wikipedia as a data visualization is
incredibly easy to understand it’s just
text you read like a book but as a data
application its capability was around
facilitating effective collaboration the
underlying technology just allows
multiple people to create and edit
documents that’s all it does and yet
perhaps it’s fitting that the first
thing we did with it was create one
giant document to collect and organize
the entirety of central human knowledge
now Wikipedia on its own is impressive
enough and there are these fantastic
visualizations that have been put
together how if
Wikipedia were printed out like a
standard encyclopedia and the volumes it
would be the size of a small motel but I
don’t want to I want to put Wikipedia in
its entirety to the side for just a
moment and I want to concentrate
entirely on one tiny corner the part of
Wikipedia related to star trekkin now
I’m going to deviate for just a moment I
want to tell you about the first edition
of the encyclopædia Britannica when the
Encyclopedia Britannica was first put
together it took years of editing and
writing to bring together a number of
sources from science history and
literature together into what they
referred to as a dictionary of all human
knowledge
the first edition when it was published
was just shy of 2,400 pages the part of
Wikipedia currently related only to Star
Trek is approximately 12% larger III can
feel you I can feel you I promise saying
to yourself how depressing that is what
a waste of our potential of our
attention of our capability but I am NOT
going to let this story off the hook
that easily
we built a collaboration capability we
built an ability to cognitively
collaborate and organize knowledge that
was so efficient and effective that one
of the things we did with it was we
catalogued an entire base of human
knowledge larger than the entirety of
collected human knowledge just a few
generations ago about a relatively
trivial television show but we did it
together
in our spare time for free that is not
depressing that is inspiring now whether
or not you are willing to grant me the
decisively generously way I would need
to refer to the Star Trek Wikipedia
portal as a Grand Challenge of humanity
I will unapologetically label as such
the ability to cognitively collaborate
in such an efficient and effective
manner that it could exist our brain
centrally are capable of creating
knowledge from fact creating an
understanding of the world from data and
as we systematically do this we will be
able to take on challenges everything
from the Grand Challenges of humanity
all the way down to the daily mundane
challenges of modernity when we can
engage the best of humanity with
technology we can solve anything so
Marty McFly’s father was right
when you put your mind to it you can
accomplish anything and humanity when it
is engaged and when it is capable of
exploring when it’s capable of
collaborating this is what humanity does
best humanity by its nature is social we
love to work together to solve problems
big and small humanity is curious we
love to learn about new things no matter
whether it is cataloguing exactly how
many red shirts were killed in the
original series 43 or understanding the
intricacies of the human mind humanity
is ambitious in all things let’s run
with that thank you
[Applause]
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