Knowledge & opinion >

Blog

$download_content = get_field('download_content');

We’re constantly blogging about data.

If you’d like to receive our weekly newsletter The Week in Data, click here to sign up.

Topics

Topic
Data ethics and privacy
- Anna Scott
- Ben Snaith
- Dr Dave Tarrant
- Dr Mahlet (Milly) Zimeta
- Jack Hardinges
- Olivier Thereaux
- Richard Plumbly-Clegg
To ensure people can use data to make better decisions, we must make data as open as possible while protecting people’s privacy, commercial confidentiality and national security

Latest

Blog, Guides 27/02/2015
How To Use R To Access Data On The Web
- Data publishing and use
- Search and discovery
Analysing or using data without software is incredibly cumbersome if not impossible. Here we show you how you can import data from the web into a tool called R. Reasons why R has become so popular, and continues to grow, are that it’s free, open source, with state-of-the-art practices and a fantastic community.
Blog, Guides 18/12/2014
What is a CSV? A case study of CSVs on data.gov.uk
- Data publishing and use
- Jeni Tennison
CSV stands for comma-separated values. It is a simple format for tabular data and relatively easy to process. We analysed more than 20,000 links to CSV files on data.gov.uk – only around one third turned out to be machine-readable.
Blog, Case study 30/10/2014

Guest post: Linked data and the future of the web Identifiers are at the heart of how data becomes linked, but not many people know how to use them. The ODI and Thomson Reuters have written a guide to identifier schemes.
Blog, Case study 30/10/2014

Guest post: Linked data and the future of the web Today’s world would have been almost unimaginable then, and the phenomenal growth of the web has been intrinsically linked with many of the technology advances of the past 25 years. It will be no surprise if that continues for the next 25.
Blog 27/02/2014
Fig Data 11 Tips How Handle Big Data R And 1 Bad Pun
- Emerging tech and AI
In our latest project, Show me the Money, we used close to 14 million rows to analyse regional activity of peer-to-peer lending in the UK. Conventional tools such as Excel fail (limited to 1,048,576 rows), which is sometimes taken as the definition of Big Data. Then again, I recently heard one of the leading experts, Ken Cukier, say: “there is no definition of big data”.
Blog 11/01/2014
2014: The year of CSV
- Data publishing and use
- Jeni Tennison
Jeni Tennison’s goal in 2014 was to make it easier for developers to use tabular data
Blog 18/04/2013
A cornerstone for open data: the Postcode Address File
- Sir Nigel Shadbolt
Blog 18/04/2013
PAF decision "flies in the face" of government commitments
- Emma Thwaites
Blog, Case study 12/06/2012
Prescription Savings Worth Millions Identified by ODI incubated company
- Emma Thwaites
Innovative startups working with NHS doctors and academics have found a simple way to save millions of pounds