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Man versus Computer

Henrik Gabs Liliendahl8 Comments

In a recent social network happening Jim Harris and Phil Simon discussed whether IT projects are like the board games Monopoly or Risk.

I notice that both these games are played with dice.

I remember back in the early 80’s I had some programming training by constructing a Yahtzee game on a computer. The following parts were at my disposal:

  • Platform: IBM 8100 minicomputer
  • Language: COBOL compiler
  • User Interface: Screen with 80 characters in 24 rows

As the user interface design options were limited the exiting part became the one player mode where I had to teach (program) the computer which dice to save in a given situation – and make that logic be based on patterns rather than every possible combination.

While having some other people testing the man versus computer in the one player mode I found out that I could actually construct a compact program that in the long run won more rounds than (ordinary) people.

Now, what about games without dice? Here we know that there has been a development even around chess where now the computer is the better one compared to any human.

So, what about data quality? Is it man or computer who is best at solving the matter. A blog post from Robert Barker called “Avoiding False Positives: Analytics or Humans?” has a sentiment.

diceAlso seen from a time and cost perspective the computer does have some advantages compared to humans.

But still we need humans to select what game to be played. Throw the dice…

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Alignment of business and IT

Henrik Gabs LiliendahlLeave a comment

teamworkBeing a Data Quality professional may be achieved by coming from the business side or the technology side of practice. But more important in my eyes is the question whether you have made serious attempts and succeeded in understanding the side from where you didn’t start.

Many blog posts made around the data quality conundrum discusses the role of the business side versus the role of the technology side and various weights in different contexts are given to these sides. It should not be surprising for a Data Quality professional that there is no absolute true or absolute false simple answer to such a question. Fortunately I find most discussions, when they are taken, ends up with the “peace on earth” sentiment:

  • Of course it’s the business requirements striving for business value that governs any initiative using technology in order to improve business performance
  • Of course the emerge (or discovery) of new technology may change the way you arrange business processes in order to gain on competitive business performance

From that point of view I am looking forward to continued discussions over all the important issues around data and information quality improvement and prevention as, but not limited to:

  • What is the business value of better information quality
  • How to gather business requirement related to information quality in order to make data fit for purpose(s)
  • Who is needed to accomplish the data quality improvement tasks – probably people from business, IT and all those mixed ones (credit: Jim Harris of OCDQblog)
  • When is the data quality technology so mature that it will cope with issues in a way not seen before
  • Which different kinds of methodologies and techniques are best for different sort of data quality challenges
  • Where on earth is the answers to all these questions

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