Addressing big data variety using an automated approach for data characterization

The creation of new knowledge from manipulating and analysing existing knowledge is one of the primary objectives of any cognitive system. Most of the effort on Big Data research has been focussed upon Volume and Velocity, while Variety, “the ugly duckling” of Big Data, is often neglected and difficult to solve. A principal challenge with Variety is being able to understand and comprehend the data. This paper proposes and evaluates an automated approach for metadata identification and enrichment in describing Big Data. The paper focuses on the use of self-learning systems that will enable automatic compliance of data against regulatory requirements along with the capability of generating valuable and readily usable metadata towards data classification. Two experiments towards data confidentiality and data identification were conducted in evaluating the feasibility of the approach. The focus of the experiments was to confirm that repetitive manual tasks can be automated, thus reducing the focus of a Data Scientist on data identification and thereby providing more focus towards the extraction and analysis of the data itself. The origin of the datasets used were Private/Business and Public/Governmental and exhibited diverse characteristics in relation to the number of files and size of the files. The experimental work confirmed that: (a) the use of algorithmic techniques attributed to the substantial decrease in false positives regarding the identification of confidential information; (b) evidence that the use of a fraction of a data set along with statistical analysis and supervised learning is sufficient in identifying the structure of information within it. With this approach, the issues of understanding the nature of data can be mitigated, enabling a greater focus on meaningful interpretation of the heterogeneous data.

Letramento crítico e ensino de língua inglesa: Investigando a construção da competência crítica de aprendizes a partir da leitura do conto “The Ugly Duckling”

Este trabalho trata-se de uma narrativa de experiência, vivenciada e fundamentada na implementação do projeto pedagógico “The different is not ugly”. Com esta pesquisa pretendemos compreender se e como foi possível desenvolver a competência crítica de aprendizes de língua inglesa, partindo da leitura de uma adaptação do conto de fadas The ugly duckling, originalmente escrito por Hans Christian Andersen. Para tanto, nos ancoramos numa concepção crítica de língua como discurso (FAIRCLOUGH, 2008), de texto como uma construção multimodal (ROJO, 2019) e da experiência de aprendizagem como uma possibilidade de letramento crítico, organizada metodologicamente num ciclo de redesign de textos (JANKS, 2010). Em termos metodológicos, o presente estudo segue uma orientação qualitativa e configura-se como uma pesquisa-ação. Participaram do projeto alunos do 9º ano de uma escola pública municipal, localizada na zona rural da cidade Apodi-RN. O desenvolvimento da prática deu-se em formato remoto, tendo em vista a situação pandêmica atual. A partir dessa experiência pedagógica pudemos observar que as tarefas desenvolvidas no decorrer do projeto colaboraram para o desenvolvimento da criticidade dos aprendizes, ao passo que os participantes se locomoviam dos sentidos literais para os sentidos ideológicos dos textos, conseguindo enxergar e debater sobre situações reais, mesmo tendo como base enquadramentos ficcionais da história “The ugly duckling”.

The elements of style

Each "Communication Corner" essay is self-contained; however, they build on each other. For best results, before reading this essay and doing the exercise, go to the first essay "How an Ugly Duckling Became a Swan," then read each succeeding essay. Over the decades, hundreds if not thousands of books have been published on the keys to good writing. However, barely a handful have reached the status of "must reading." Here is one of them.

Enfolding the Hand, Entrancing the Eye: Erica Baum’s Dog Ear

This essay will situate Erica Baum’s Dog Ear within broader discussions of appropriation, remediation, and queer phenomenology.  In her ongoing series, begun over a decade ago, Baum makes the quotidian act of folding the corner of a book’s page into a sculptural intervention, allowing her to “reauthor” the newly concealed and revealed juxtaposition of text.  These digital photographs, initially displayed in art galleries, were selectively sequenced by Baum to become Dog Ear (Ugly Duckling Presse 2011, reprinted 2016).  Both the accompanying critical writings and subsequent reviews of the book emphasized continuities between Baum’s project and traditions of found and concrete poetry, alongside modernist precursors like Malevich and Albers who informed her visual lexicon.  While acknowledging these legacies, my essay focuses on the evident limitations of attempts to render Baum’s works using standard and modified modes of lineation (offered by Kenneth Goldsmith and Amaranth Borsuk, respectively) which consistently evacuate what is most compelling about them.  Instead, I propose and demonstrate a method of gestalt poetics, one which lets their circuitous, open-ended dimensions register more fully by emphasizing evocative recombination, adjacency, and the interrelation of these remediated pages as they return back to and contort the codex.  Textual figures get produced, as Sara Ahmed has argued “by acts of relegation” and their queerness, in Baum’s work, depends on perpetually destabilizing the bifurcation between reading and looking in order to shift our sense of foreground and background into an extended matrix of partial legibilities. 

Creativity and common sense in writing and speaking

Each "Communication Corner" essay is self-contained; however, they build on each other. For best results, before reading this essay and doing the exercise, go to the first essay "How an Ugly Duckling Became a Swan," then read each succeeding essay. A previous essay ("What Advertising Can Teach Us About Effective Writing and Speaking") posited what at first glance may have seemed to be a radical idea. And that is: However superficially it may appear, print advertising copy (text), which is designed to sell things, represents some of the best, most carefully constructed writing you will ever see. It must be, because to achieve its objective, advertising copy must say a world of things to the potential consumer in just a thimbleful of words. With this fundamental idea as a foundation, we can now explore this fruitful subject more deeply.

What Advertising Can Teach Us About Effective Writing and Speaking

Each "Communication Corner" essay is self-contained; however, they build on each other. For best results, before reading this essay and doing the exercise, go to the first essay "How an Ugly Duckling Became a Swan," then read each succeeding essay. As a form of writing, advertising copy has a poor reputation because in many minds its objective is to "sell people things they don't want and don't need." This is debatable. What is not debatable is that advertising copy represents some of the best writing you will ever see. It has to, because its objective is to say a world of things in just a thimble-full of words. Writers of more meritorious texts (articles, essays, book reports, business reports, research papers, etc.) can learn a lot from understanding how these consummate wordsmiths go about their work.

When saying the wrong thing doesn't really matter

Each "Communication Corner" essay is self-contained; however, they build on each other. For best results, before reading this essay and doing the exercise, go to the first essay "How an Ugly Duckling Became a Swan," then read each succeeding essay. Getting one's tongue tangled is an ever-present fear for most public speakers. But it shouldn't be. Occasionally saying the wrong thing seldom does any serious damage, or any damage at all, to the effectiveness of a presentation. Here's why.