Peculiar Periodicals
It turns out there are even more unlikely publications than The Journal of Unlikely Science. Every Thursday, our very own Dr Steer turns his attention to another weird science journal.
This week: DATA MINING AND KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY
| Name – Blimey - there was me thinking that, to get data, you had to carry out some experiments or observe things in the wild or, at the very least, play around with mathematical formulae. Now I find out that you can get it simply by sending children down the data mines. |  |
) "click to enlarge") Front cover – Brilliant! It's actually a picture of people digging data up from underground. I knew it. The image I've got of the cover is a bit small (click on thumbnail to see it) so here's a larger version of the main image. |
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| Off-the-wallness – It's only February and they've already published the April edition, so they obviously don't stick to convention. | |
| Usefulness – I don't know. With the best will in the world, I don't really understand what they're talking about. One article is entitled 'Web usage mining: extracting unexpected periods from web logs' - what does this mean? And do we care? Ah, I know the answer to that. |  |
| Impressiveness – Sadly data mining doesn't actually involve sending pre-schoolers in the bowels of the Earth looking for numbers, but sorting through large amounts of data to pick out relevant information. Which is disappointing. |  |
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| Overall - Take a whole load of numbers, jiggle them about and see what falls out - ah, 30. |  |
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Impact factor: Do you remember the fear of being faced with a sheet full of numbers? That's the one.Find more Peculiar Periodicals
The Null's other regular features:
Monday: Phunny Phobias
Tuesday: Strange Scientific Names
Wednesday: Doctor Doctor
Thursday: Peculiar Periodicals
Friday: End of the Week Timewasters
Image: Robin Davies
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