Solving big data's 'fusion' problem

As the field of "big data" has emerged as a tool for solving all sorts of scientific and societal questions, one of the main challenges that remains is whether, and how, multiple sets of data from various sources could be combined to determine cause-and-effect relationships in new and untested situations. Now, computer scientists from UCLA and Purdue University have devised a theoretical solution to that problem. Their research, which was published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could help improve scientists' ability to understand health care, economics, the environment and other areas of study, and to glean much more pertinent insight from data. The study's authors are Judea Pearl, a distinguished professor of computer science at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Elias Bareinboim, an assistant professor of computer science at Purdue University who earned his doctorate at UCLA. Big data involves using mountains and mountains of information to uncover trends and patterns.