Comments on: Rajaraman’s First Law: More Data will beat Better Software

By: Log Buffer #91: a Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs

Log Buffer #91: a Carnival of the Vanities for DBAs — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 16:53:08 +0000

[...] here again, Paul VallÃ©e submits what he dubs Rajaramanâ€™s First Law: more data will beat better [...]

By: Paul Vallee

Paul Vallee — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 19:41:47 +0000

It took data mining to realize that people buy beer and diapers at the same time;

Not in Ontario, Sheeri!!!

By: Sheeri Cabral

Sheeri Cabral — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 17:36:37 +0000

To be fair, “more” data is vague — it’s really “different” data that helps here. There’s another dimension being added, the categories from IMDB, that help.

The problem with algorithms is they try to be smart, and guess what’s going to happen. Data mining makes conclusions based on what’s already happened, so the algorithms of the future are adaptive ones that can act one way and then determine if they should continue to act that way.

It took data mining to realize that people buy beer and diapers at the same time; “smart” people can guess pairing peanut butter and jelly or peanut butter and milk. But sometimes it’s better to be lazy than smart. :)

And I think “more data” leads to “better software” which leads to “more data”….