Book
Everyday adventures with unruly data / Melanie Feinberg.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780262544405
- ISBN: 0262544407
- Physical Description: xii, 318 pages : illustrations, map, portrait, facsimile ; 23 cm
- Publisher: Cambridge, Massachusetts ; The MIT Press, [2022]
- Copyright: ©2022
Content descriptions
| Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| Formatted Contents Note: | Introduction. A spirit of adventure -- Serendipity -- Objectivity -- Equivalence -- Interoperability -- Taxonomy -- Labels -- Locality -- Conclusion. Still life with data. |
| Summary, etc.: | "An engaging look at how we think about data in our everyday lives, from shopping for an appliance to stepping on a scale to cooking rice in another country"-- Provided by publisher. |
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Information technology > Social aspects. Knowledge management. Information organization. Information society. |
Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at GRPL.
▼ Additional Content
Everyday Adventures with Unruly Data
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Table of Contents
Everyday Adventures with Unruly Data
| Section | Section Description | Page Number |
|---|---|---|
| Acknowledgments | p. xi | |
| Introduction: A Spirit of Adventure | p. 1 | |
| Wayfaring and Transport | p. 1 | |
| Data in the Everyday | p. 2 | |
| Chapter Structure: Adventure and Reflection | p. 4 | |
| Thematic Sequence and Connecting Arguments | p. 5 | |
| This Book as Methodological Invitation | p. 7 | |
| Antecedents | p. 9 | |
| 1 | Serendipity | p. 13 |
| Adventure: A Trip to the Library | p. 13 | |
| An Uncomfortable Encounter with an Enthusiastic Librarian | p. 13 | |
| An Enchantingly Strange Museum | p. 16 | |
| A Call Number That I Can't Find | p. 18 | |
| Danish Supermarkets | p. 20 | |
| Two Serendipitous Books | p. 24 | |
| Reflection: How Do We Attend to Data in the Everyday? | p. 26 | |
| The Intellectual Heritage of Knowledge Organization | p. 26 | |
| Reciprocal Themes across Multiple Disciplines | p. 28 | |
| Information Design, Power, and Accountability | p. 29 | |
| 2 | Objectivity | p. 33 |
| Adventure: That Scale Must Be Wrong! | p. 33 | |
| Stepping on a Scale | p. 33 | |
| Step Counters on Smartphones | p. 35 | |
| The Allure of Numbers | p. 38 | |
| Measurement and Convention | p. 40 | |
| Reflection: How Is the Quantitative Not? | p. 45 | |
| The Two Cultures of the Sciences and the Humanities | p. 45 | |
| Human Judgment in Quantitative Measurement | p. 47 | |
| The Conduit Metaphor and the Mathematical Theory of Communication | p. 52 | |
| Objectivity as That Which Speaks for Itself | p. 54 | |
| The Human Work of Data Collection | p. 57 | |
| 3 | Equivalence | p. 61 |
| Adventure: When Is Butter? | p. 61 | |
| Lurpak Butter in Denmark and Lurpak Butter in the United States | p. 61 | |
| Thin Mints in California and Thin Mints in Texas | p. 64 | |
| American Coke and Mexican Coke | p. 65 | |
| Editions of Hamlet in North American Library Catalogs | p. 68 | |
| Editions of Mr Jelly's Business in the Austlit Catalog | p. 74 | |
| Reflection: Is This Tiling the Same as That One? | p. 81 | |
| What One Thing Might Constitute | p. 81 | |
| Disciplinary Assumptions about Information Things (Documents) | p. 83 | |
| Decisions about Things in Data Design and Implementation | p. 87 | |
| 4 | Interoperability | p. 95 |
| Adventure: I Can't Cook Rice in Copenhagen | p. 95 | |
| Cooking Rice | p. 95 | |
| French Bread in Different Languages | p. 99 | |
| The Provenance of an Afternoon Pastry | p. 103 | |
| A Thai Robot Curry Taster | p. 105 | |
| Protocols for Removing Dangerous Posts from Sociai Media | p. 111 | |
| Reflection: How Does the Same Process Lead to Different Outcomes? | p. 114 | |
| Scientific Reproducibility as an Unsettled Concept | p. 114 | |
| The Challenge of Semantic Data Interoperability | p. 116 | |
| Empirical Outcomes in the Pursuit of Interoperable Data | p. 122 | |
| The Imperative of Data Criticism | p. 126 | |
| 5 | Taxonomy | p. 129 |
| Adventure: Not That Hierarchy | p. 129 | |
| A Vile Hierarchy | p. 129 | |
| The Vile Hierarchy, Revised | p. 135 | |
| That Jumble Drawer in Your Kitchen | p. 140 | |
| Confessions of a Data Snob | p. 141 | |
| "User-Centered" Taxonomy | p. 145 | |
| Reflection: How Does Classificatory Structure Matter? | p. 147 | |
| A Constellation of Fundamental Data Concepts | p. 147 | |
| Taxonomies and Data Users | p. 148 | |
| Taxonomy Development as Design Rather Than Discovery | p. 150 | |
| Structural Constraint as an Invitation to Creativity | p. 154 | |
| 6 | Labels | p. 159 |
| Adventure: A Mistake on My Mastercard | p. 159 | |
| A Mistaken Name That I Like | p. 159 | |
| Greece and Macedonia | p. 163 | |
| Mrs., Miss, and Ms. | p. 166 | |
| A Magic Wand | p. 169 | |
| Orientals, the Yellow Peril, and the Chinese Virus | p. 170 | |
| Reflection: What's in a Name? | p. 176 | |
| Common-Sense Distinctions between Concepts and Labels | p. 176 | |
| Distinctions between Concepts and Labels in the Practical Literature of Controlled Vocabularies | p. 178 | |
| Empirical Realities of Extracting Concepts from Documents | p. 182 | |
| Reconfiguring Concept-Label Relationships | p. 186 | |
| 7 | Locality | p. 191 |
| Adventure: Have You Ever Been to Louisiana? | p. 191 | |
| A Poet Talking about American Racism | p. 191 | |
| Height Measurement at the Doctor's Office | p. 193 | |
| Race and Ethnicity in the US Census | p. 196 | |
| Race and Ethnicity in Online Dating Sites | p. 198 | |
| A Novelist Talking about Danish Racism | p. 207 | |
| Reflection: How Is Data Situated? | p. 210 | |
| Constraint and Creativity in Cognitive Categorization | p. 210 | |
| Local Conditions and Cognitive Prototypes | p. 213 | |
| Historical Efforts to Standardize Data Collection across Locations | p. 216 | |
| Data Creation as an Assertion of Values (An Extended Example from Library Cataloging Data) | p. 219 | |
| Cherishing the Humanity in Our Data | p. 225 | |
| Conclusion: Still Life with Data | p. 231 | |
| Notes | p. 243 | |
| References | p. 275 | |
| Index | p. 301 |
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