Evidence Promoting Good Data Management¶

• Evidence Promoting Good Data Management
  • The Lost Laptop Problem
  • Reliability
  • Archiving Data
    • BBC Domesday Project
  • Sharing Data
  • Related Media
    • Disk Drives Break
    • Laptops Break / Get Broken

If you have any additional examples that you would like to share, please email them to: rdm.c4dm at gmail.com

Disasters

Tales Of Lost Data

The Lost Laptop Problem¶

• 2010 Ponemon Institute report for Intel re. US laptops
  • On average, 2.3% of laptops assigned to employees are lost each year
  • In education & research that rises to 3.7%, with 10.8% of laptops being lost before the end of their useful life
    • ~3 years i.e. within 1 PhD of allocation!
  • 75% lost outside the workplace
• Very similar results from 2011 European report!

Intel 2010, The Billion Dollar Lost Laptop Problem - http://tinyurl.com/8c9m4bn

Intel 2011, The Billion Euro Laptop Problem - http://tinyurl.com/9wpbxn9

Reliability¶

Cloud

Archiving Data¶

BBC Domesday Project¶

1986 Project to do a modern-day Domesday book (early crowd-sourcing)

• Used “BBC Master” computers with data on laserdisc
• Collected 147,819 pages of text and 23,225 photos
• Media expiring and obsolete technology put the data at risk!

Domesday Reloaded (2011)

• Required emulation of software
• Images restored from original masters
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/domesday

To allow long-term access to data

• Don't use obscure formats!
• Don't use obscure media!
• Don't rely on technology being available!
• Do keep original source material!

Google images for BBC Domesday

Sharing Data¶

Piwowar, Heather A., Roger S. Day, and Douglas B. Fridsma. Sharing detailed research data is associated with increased citation rate.
PLoS One 2.3 (2007): e308.

Related Media¶

Disk Drives Break¶

DataCent collection of disk drive failure sounds

Laptops Break / Get Broken¶

• Shot laptop
• Google images of broken laptops

Further Reading