Thursday, February 06, 2014

PHILANTHROPY 2173: The heroism of data entry

PHILANTHROPY 2173: The heroism of data entry: Even I was unprepared for the heroism of data entry. Or, as Miller puts it: "It’s the heroism of entering 7,700 separate positions into a database so we can track social and financial gains in real time in our equity portfolio." None of the cool data tricks listed in the first line of this blog are possible without clean, coherent, well-entered data. Even ambient data depends on behind-the-scenes structuring built into the algorithms (another topic altogether) in order to work. The hard work of making data useful is not usually fodder for a Foundation President's annual letter.

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