The age of analytics

The Age of Analytics

Operational Research Society, April 30th 2014

Sir Mark WalportChief Scientific Adviser to HM Government

2

WW2 origins of operational research: learning to think counter-intuitively

• Add armour to the parts of bombers that come back damaged by flak, or the undamaged parts?

• Better to protect the parts that stay undamaged. If the plane gets hit there, it never comes back for inspection.

Credit: USAAF

The Age of Analytics, April 30th 2014

3

Patrick Blackett

• Answers like this were developed by Patrick Blackett (1897-1974) and team.

• Blackett was a key founder of the Operational Research Society in 1947.

• His career nearly ended in 1925, when a young Robert Oppenheimer attempted to give him a poisoned apple.

Copyright: Stephen Burch


4

The opportunities presented by big data

Credit: Shutterstock

5

What is big data?

• Rule of thumb definition is a dataset that can’t be mapped on an Excel spreadsheet.

• More technically, the four Vs: velocity, variety, volume and

veracity, are the key characteristics of big data.


6

Sources of data in a smart city

Real-time

Admindata

Object sensors

Pollution sensors

People Social media

Housing Health TaxesEducation

Credit: NPR Credit: University of California Credit: AIA

Credit: HM TreasuryCredit: Brian Rose Credit: KRoock74 (CC BY-SA 3.0) Credit: Editor5807 (PD)


7

How a smart city can use data

Optimising flows of people and resources

Planning for future requirements

Providing personalised services


8

Data can help us get about

Open data - Citymapper Crowdsourced data - Streetbump

Driverless carsAnonymised crowdsourced data – Google Traffic

Credit: Ultra Global PRT


9

Data opens up a world of possibilities for our entertainment, education and efficiency

Finding things outTelling other people

thingsListening and

watching things

Navigating the realworld

Navigating fictionalworlds

Buying and sellingstuff

Playing games Storing stuffRecording our lives andthose of friends/families

Socialising with others Stealing things Plotting and causing harm


10

• Companies make it easier and cheaper for consumers to get the goods they want, in return for access to data about their spending habits.

• That data can be used on an individual level, e.g. to target advertising, or to develop more sophisticated insights into how people shop.

Private sector analytics: loyalty cards and Experian

Credit: nectar


11

How does government use data?

Voting

Taxes

Planning

Law enforcement

Credit: ClassicStock

Credit: Phlip Ingham/CC BY-ND 2.0 Credit: South Yorkshire Police

Credit: Shutterstock


12

Harnessing ICT: A national diabetes system for Scotland

Total Scottish Population 5.2M

People with diabetes : 251,132 (4.9%)

People with Type 1 DM : ~27,000 (0.5%)

All patients nationally are registered onto a single register; the SCI-DC register

SCI-DC used in all 38 hospitals

Nightly capture of data from all 1043 primary care practices across Scotland

Courtesy of Andrew Morris


13

Percen

tage o

f Patien

ts

Data recorded within the previous 15 months

http://www.diabetesinscotland.org.uk/Publications/SDS%202010.pdf

Courtesy of Andrew Morris

Scottish Diabetes Survey – over 90% capture of key variables since 2007

Recording of Key Biomedical Markers


14

Tax data to home in on fraud

• HMRC uses sophisticated software to collect and analyse many sources of information about the finances of corporations and individuals, to identify cases that warrant investigation.

• Connect, running since 2010, combines over 1 billion records and has yielded over £2bn in tax.


15

National security


16

What about privacy and security?Credit: Maksim Kabakou, Shutterstock

17

Information technology has created new ways of locating or finding us

The consequence of all of this is that we are giving a lot of information out that others can then use….

Image: iPhone tracking data


18

Lots of other people are interested in our data. Who knows the most about us?

Government Corporations

ONS Google

NHS Loyalty Cards

HMRC Experian


19

• Released anonymised film rental data and set a $1m prize, hoping to improve recommendation algorithms.

• People’s viewing taste beyond usual blockbusters is highly individual.

• Triangulating with IMDB data, bloggers identified individual users and were able to reveal their full list of rentals, not just those they had “rated”.

Dangers of releasing data into the wild

• Released anonymised search data for research purposes.

• Journalists were able to pick up clues to name and location, then triangulate with embarrassing search queries.

• Programme was halted, its initiators sacked.


20

Privacy controls are not binary but fall on spectra

ObfuscationOpenly identifiable

Anonymised to the point of losing valuable content

Access / EnvironmentFree on the internet

Locked in a steel-lined room

Governance and accountabilityLittle legislation Highly legislated

(Everyone) (Accredited researcher)


21

The myth of consent - do we really read and understand the full terms and conditions?

• In 2008, researchers calculated it would take 76 working days to read all the privacy policies you encounter in a year. If everyone in the US did so, it would cost the country more than the GDP of Florida.

• In 2010 GameStation.com - a UK-based games retailer - added a clause to their T&Cs, “to grant Us a non transferable option to claim, for now and for ever more, your immortal soul”.

• A publicity stunt, but revealed 88% of customers in the time period had not read the T&Cs.Michael Pacher: St. Augustine and the Devil, 1471-75

Credit: Google

Credit: PD


22

Can we blame people?

Source: Which, via Bobby Duffy IPSOS-MORI


23

Social intelligence on personalisation vs. privacy

• Personalisation vs. Privacy was a major IPSOS MORI international poll, 16,000 interviews, results released early 2014.

• Up to 90% of people are concerned about how their (online) information is used.

• People are more outraged by companies being cavalier with their data than they are by companies exploiting foreign workers, damaging the environment, overcharging for their products or paying huge bonuses.

Credit: Maksim Kabakou, Shutterstock


24

• Harm can be done by sharing and not sharing data

• DPA law provides exemptions for research. The proposed EU Data Protection Regulation, which would replace the DPA, remains a concern. The Parliament’s draft text would make some current medical research illegal.

• HMG and the UK academic community are united in lobbying for a final text that does not overly restrict important research.

Governance: data protection legislation

Credit: EU dpi


25

• In the USA, preventable medical errors are the third leading cause of death (440,000 per year – Journal of Patient Safety, 2013). Data analytics can identify and address the underlying causes.

• Countries all around the world are currently wrestling with the same issue of how to share medical data while protecting privacy.

• We need to be more open with people on how their data may and may not be used, and communicate the benefits.

On care.data…

“This information helps us identify the causes of cancer and heart disease; it helps us to spot side-effects from beneficial treatments, and switch patients to the safest drugs; it helps us spot failing hospitals, or rubbish surgeons; and it helps us spot the areas of greatest need in the NHS. Numbers in medicine are not an abstract academic game: they are made of flesh and blood, and they show us how to prevent unnecessary pain, suffering and death.”

Ben Goldacre, Guardian 21 February

The challenge of communicating the benefits: care.data


26

How do we build capability?

Credit: Frank A. Camaratta, Jr, The House of Staunton, Inc

27

Skills pipeline

Source: DfE

-600

-500

-400

-300

-200

-100

0

100

200

2000/01 2001/02 2002/03 2003/04 2004/05 2005/06 2006/07 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13

Mathematics teacher recruitment shortfall/surplus


28

The Turing Institute

The Mission

1. To undertake research and knowledge sharing in the key disciplines of mathematics, computer and data science

2. To develop networks between leaders

3. To enable industry and academia to work together on research with practical applications

4. To provide advice to policy makers on the wider implications of research

5. To provide strategic oversight and leadership

The vision1. Promote the development

and use of advanced mathematics, computer science and algorithms for human benefit

2. Conduct first class research and development

3. It will be a world leading institute that will provide a fitting memorial to Alan Turing

Credit: Duane Wessels (CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0)


29

We need to ensure analysts have space within their jobs to innovate

Operation

• The day job.

• Doing the same thing repeatedly, with minimal failure.

• Change is risky.

• Success is easy to measure.

• Return is immediate.

Innovation

• Few people do this only.

• Finding better ways to do things.

• Failures and false starts are to be expected.

• Fuzzy, conflicting goals.

• Hard to measure.

• Return comes in the future.


30

Enabling legislation

• An open consultation on data sharing, led by Francis Maude.

• Aiming for an agreed approach between parties and involving privacy groups, for a White Paper at the end of the year.

• Laying the ground for a Data Sharing Bill after the 2015 election.

Credit: Cabinet Office


31

What is needed from the OR Society?

• Research to stay at the cutting edge.

• Augment analytical skills with coding skills.

• Plug into the world of big data: volume, velocity, variety and veracity.

Credit: Petr Ivanov, Fotolia


32

We all need to work together

Universities Industry

Credit: Alamy Credit: Red Spider UK


http://www.raeng.org.uk/default.htm

33

There is no going back – the world has been shaped by the digital revolution

There are new tools for understanding ourselves and the world

Huge opportunities for the data science and operational research profession, to be right at the centre of policymaking

There are unforeseen benefits and harms: need a sophisticated level of debate

Final messages

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. We apologise for any errors or omissions in the included attributions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future versions of this slide set. We can be contacted through [email protected].

@uksciencechief

www.gov.uk/go-science

The age of analytics

Government & Nonprofit

Transcript of The age of analytics