Task 1: review data mining concepts and tasks
Answer the exercise questions 1-3 in Textbook 1.7. For Question 2, feel free to change the question scenario from “an Internet search engine company” to any organization that you would like to think of. It can be a company, government office, NGO, etc.
Task 2: practice your critical thinking and writing
Read the following two news articles. One criticized Google Flu Trend, and the other defended it. Write one paragraph to summarize the criticism, and another paragraph for the defense. Write the third paragraph to offer your own thought, e.g. is the criticism valid? Does the defense make sense? What other problems or benefit do you see in Google Flu Trend or similar big data applications?
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/28/google-flu-trends-the-limits-of-big-data/
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/03/in-defense-of-google-flu-trends/359688/
