Knowledge and Dignity in the Era of “Big Data”

Private companies and government agencies are now creating and tapping into vastly more data than ever before. These data flows include enormous amounts of personal information and raise questions about privacy and intellectual policy that could have profound impacts on our lives. While data collection and creation are nearly ubiquitous, the instruments of collection and analysis are often hidden in order to track more natural behavior. Recent revelations of massive governmental data collection offer the country, and librarians in particular, an opportunity to discuss and question the societal implications of “Big Data,” and the policies that govern them.     

Variability of inter-team distances associated with match events in elite-standard soccer

Abstract In soccer, critical match events like goal attempts can be preceded by periods of instability in the balance between the two teams' behaviours. Therefore, we determined periods of high variability in the distance between the teams' centroid positions longitudinally and laterally in an international-standard soccer match and evaluated corresponding match events. Position data were collected with AMISCO Pro?. Inter-team distance variability was calculated over a 3-s moving window. Out of the 242 match periods that exceeded the variability criterion, 51 were dead-ball situations. Match events identified through longitudinal inter-team distance primarily related to defending players moving forward-backward after a longitudinal pass. Match events identified through lateral inter-team distance mainly corresponded with defending players moving laterally following sideways passing. One of two goals and two of fourteen goal-attempts were preceded by a period of high variability. Together, periods of highly variable inter-team distance were associated with collective defensive actions and team reorganisation in dead-ball moments rather than goals or goal attempts. Inter-team dynamics quantified (mutual) reorganisation of the teams and marked teams' collective defensive ability to respond to attacking explorations.