After Theory Before Big Data

This book’s key purpose is to contribute to the ongoing "theoretical" discussion in the field of international relations (IR) concerning the status of grand theories. However, it also has a wider, critical mission: to challenge mainstream social science and its dominant methodology, as well as the unfettered optimism that the problem of social order can be solved by the "application" of scientific knowledge to our practical problems. The author uses rigorous philosophical analysis to focus on the unexamined assumptions that form the bedrock of many contemporary scholars in IR and demonstrates the unavailability of a universal "scientific" procedure for finding the facts, when we face practical choices and issues of social reproduction. This book will be of interest to upper-level students of IR, sociology, history, and philosophy of science; it will also speak to students of security, foreign policy making, migration, and political economy, in addressing the basis of their attitudes in thinking about the world and the role of scholarship.

Big Data, gathered together and re-analysed, can be used to form endless variations of our persons - so-called ‘data doubles’. Whilst never a precise portrayal of who we are, they unarguably contain glimpses of details about us that, when deployed into various routines (such as management, policing and advertising) can affect us in many ways. How are we to deal with Big Data? When is it beneficial to us? When is it harmful? How might we regulate it? Offering careful and critical analyses, this timely volume aims to broaden well-informed, unprejudiced discourse, focusing on: the tenets of Big Data, the politics of governance and regulation; and Big Data practices, performance and resistance. An interdisciplinary volume, The Politics of Big Data will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral and senior researchers interested in fields such as Technology, Politics and Surveillance.

Three trends have dominated the political economy of integration during the last two decades: globalization, economic nationalism, and regionalization. This book explores comparative regional integration, focusing on both intra­ regional integration and relations among regions in the context of power. The most common focus of integration studies has been on the logic of cooperation, but there is another logic of integration: power. The relevance of power today is represented by the relations within the Eurozone, especially between creditors and debtors. By the same line of reasoning, integration in Asia cannot ignore the respective roles of China, Japan, and Korea, nor the unresolved disputes about Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the islands in the South China Sea. This edited volume addresses the role of power in regional integration in three contexts: (1) the role of hegemonic external actors (the US and China) in regional integration; (2) the role of core states within regions (Germany, China , Japan, and Brazil); and (3) the role of noncore states- smaller and middle­ range powers (Italy and Greece in Europe; South Korea and Malaysia in Asia; and Argentina, Colombia, Uruguay, and Paraguay in Latin America). This book will benefit students and scholars of international relations and comparative political economy, especially those with an interest in integration studies and comparative regionalism.

A exploration of the latest trend in technology and the impact it will have on the economy, science, and society at large.

The internet has fundamentally transformed society in the past 25 years, yet existing theories of mass or interpersonal communication do not work well in understanding a digital world. Nor has this understanding been helped by disciplinary specialization and a continual focus on the latest innovations. Ralph Schroeder takes a longer-term view, synthesizing perspectives and findings from various social science disciplines in four countries: the United States, Sweden, India and China. His comparison highlights, among other observations, that smartphones are in many respects more important than PC-based internet uses. Social Theory after the Internet focuses on everyday uses and effects of the internet, including information seeking and big data, and explains how the internet has gone beyond traditional media in, for example, enabling Donald Trump and Narendra Modi to come to power. Schroeder puts forward a sophisticated theory of the role of the internet, and how both technological and social forces shape its significance. He provides a sweeping and penetrating study, theoretically ambitious and at the same time always empirically grounded.The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of digital media and society, the internet and politics, and the social implications of big data.

In this textbook, basic mathematical models used in Big Data Analytics are presented and application-oriented references to relevant practical issues are made. Necessary mathematical tools are examined and applied to current problems of data analysis, such as brand loyalty, portfolio selection, credit investigation, quality control, product clustering, asset pricing etc. – mainly in an economic context. In addition, we discuss interdisciplinary applications to biology, linguistics, sociology, electrical engineering, computer science and artificial intelligence. For the models, we make use of a wide range of mathematics – from basic disciplines of numerical linear algebra, statistics and optimization to more specialized game, graph and even complexity theories. By doing so, we cover all relevant techniques commonly used in Big Data Analytics.Each chapter starts with a concrete practical problem whose primary aim is to motivate the study of a particular Big Data Analytics technique. Next, mathematical results follow – including important definitions, auxiliary statements and conclusions arising. Case-studies help to deepen the acquired knowledge by applying it in an interdisciplinary context. Exercises serve to improve understanding of the underlying theory. Complete solutions for exercises can be consulted by the interested reader at the end of the textbook; for some which have to be solved numerically, we provide descriptions of algorithms in Python code as supplementary material.This textbook has been recommended and developed for university courses in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Big data has become an important success driver in airline network planning. Maximilian Schosser explores the status quo of network planning across a case study group consisting of nine airlines representing different business models. The author describes 23 big data opportunities for airline network planning and evaluates them based on their specific value contribution for airline network planning. Subsequently, he develops a financial evaluation methodology for big data opportunities based on key performance indicators for airline network planning departments.

As digital technologies occupy a more central role in working and everyday human life, individual and social realities are increasingly constructed and communicated through digital objects, which are progressively replacing and representing physical objects. They are even shaping new forms of virtual reality. This growing digital transformation coupled with technological evolution and the development of computer computation is shaping a cyber society whose working mechanisms are grounded upon the production, deployment, and exploitation of big data. In the arts and humanities, however, the notion of big data is still in its embryonic stage, and only in the last few years, have arts and cultural organizations and institutions, artists, and humanists started to investigate, explore, and experiment with the deployment and exploitation of big data as well as understand the possible forms of collaborations based on it. Big Data in the Arts and Humanities: Theory and Practice explores the meaning, properties, and applications of big data. This book examines therelevance of big data to the arts and humanities, digital humanities, and management of big data with and for the arts and humanities. It explores the reasons and opportunities for the arts and humanities to embrace the big data revolution. The book also delineates managerial implications to successfully shape a mutually beneficial partnership between the arts and humanities and the big data- and computational digital-based sciences. Big data and arts and humanities can be likened to the rational and emotional aspects of the human mind. This book attempts to integrate these two aspects of human thought to advance decision-making and to enhance the expression of the best of human life.