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On-Line Medical Databases - Dismal Data Quality
A front-page article in the July 19th issue of The Washington Post Magazine explores the amount, kind, and quality of medical information available on the Internet. The article was prompted by a rare neurological disorder (Chiari malformation) suffered by the author's young son. The article records the author's search for medical information and medical specialists through a medical information system that is increasingly dependent on the Internet.
According to the author, both the amount of medical data and the variability in data quality among the Internet's 100,000 medical Web sites and 10,000 newsgroup support groups is so great as to be frightening - ranging from articles published in prestigious medical journals to quack medicine. The newsgroups range from physicians and researchers discussing the latest advances to parents of patients exchanging advice and sob stories. As things stand today, millions of laymen are searching the Internet looking for the best medical advice and the best medical specialists. The medical specialists themselves are overwhelmed - with information, with patients with poor information demanding good information, with the demands of managed care, and with the changing nature of medical practice.
According to the author, the hope is that future lawsuits over poor medical data and the advantages of accessing good medical data will (somehow) cause medical data providers to "clean up their act" and the Web sites that preach quackery will vanish. In the meantime, after hundreds of hours of searching through on-line medical databases, interviewing surgeons, and evaluating information about Chiari malformation, the author (Post staff reporter Marc Fisher) was able to find a pediatric neurosurgeon he felt confident about. And, so far, the surgery performed on his son seems to have been successful.
Utilitarian Data & Information: A Success on the Web
According to a front page report in the July 20th issue of The Wall Street Journal, the most popular sites on the World Wide Web aren't those related to entertainment but those that provide mundane high quality data and information like stock quotes and airline schedules. Although there has always been hope that the Web would be an entertainment showplace, slow digital transmission and display speed has limited its entertainment potential (the exception seems to be pornography). According to the Journal, it may be five years or more before a future Web entertainment delivery system can catch up with present hype.
In the meantime, utility is in. The most popular Web sites are those that provide high quality data and information at no cost to the consumer (for now, most "free" sites rely on revenue from display ads, or site owners use their site as a cost-saving feature). The sites provide information about the weather, new and used car prices, travel, stock quotes, sports scores, telephone numbers, classified advertising, package-tracking, and employment. Other popular sites allow consumers to obtain valuable information when deciding whether to buy a product (for example on-line book sales sites.) The report was written by Journal staff reporter Jared Sandberg.
Do 'Quantitative Traders' Need Better Data?
A report in the business section of the July 21st issue of The New York Times, explores "quantitative trading" on Wall Street. "Quantitative traders" use algorithmic and statistical analyses of market data to predict market trends. The analyses attempt to find market anomalies and inefficiencies that traders can exploit for profit.
According to the Times, the trouble with "quantitative trading" is that the techniques tend to be poor predictors of market behavior over time, break down when there are fundamental shifts in corporate performance, and are poor predictors in unstable markets, the "spreads" are small, and markets in the United States are "efficient," (meaning that stock prices are reliable indicators of what the public will pay for a stock at any given moment.) On the other hand, the Times reports that one "quant shop" has over 1,000 employees and has been consistently profitable. The same firm also specializes in arranging trades and buying and selling large blocks of stock for clients (activities that, presumably, generate various types of data that the firm can subsequently analyze). Because the software, algorithms, decisions, profits, and other information about "quant shops" is usually secret, it is hard to determine the accuracy of what "quant shop" executives tell reporters. The article was written by Joseph Kahn, and appears on page D1.
In a related article on the same page, Times staff journalist Edward Wyatt reports that the Vanguard Group (a large mutual fund investment corporation) has been caught up in a debate over whether the firm's mutual fund investment strategies move both small-cap and large-cap stock indexes. The debate is important because indexing has become the primary growth vehicle of the mutual fund industry, helping to fuel the rise in big stocks.
On May 21, when Vanguard began funneling $137 million into stocks that make up the Standard and Poor's Small Cap 600 index, the index surged higher, even as every other major index declined. One reason that Vanguard could push prices higher is that small-cap stocks tend to be less liquid than larger stocks. At least one analyst believes that Vanguard also pushes around the S & P 500 and other large-cap indexes. The analyst's data indicate that, more than a dozen times earlier this year, an index fund bought 400-500 stocks near the end of the trading day, causing an upward acceleration or reversal of the day's trend.