In 1962, James Watson, Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins received the Nobel prize for the discovery of the structure of DNA. Notably absent from the podium was Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray photographs of DNA contributed directly to the discovery of the double helix. They are outstanding questions around how they obtained it.
My soulmate, my wife, my “partner“ the absolute love of my life passed away last year., NEEDLESSLY. Tessie and I put our faith in our doctors and Tessie as it should be put her faith in me, and I failed her. I didn’t cheat on Tess, I didn’t gamble, I didn’t lie, although I did drink too much, however every second of every day I feel I feel I failed.
Tessie and I survived the first occurrence of cancer in 2009. Once Tess was diagnosed she was able to take advantage of Avastin at the time a new type of immunotherapy., primarily because her idiot husband did not have insurance. Which the doctors credited with putting Tessie‘s cancer into remission, that was BULLSHIT. Eight years later I’m doctors in our regular visit told Tessie she was fine doing well and there were no signs of cancer, that was bullshit. 9 years later Tessie experienced sever back pain and was told she has sciatica, 10 years later Tessie and I were in the emergency room and it was discovered the test had multiple tumors kidney liver back ….
17 months later after much suffering and pain and at this point multiple tumors, my incredible wife passed away, and I feel as her husband.
As of today in 2021, cancer occurs in our bodies at the DNA levels. We’re told and led to believe that the issue of cancer is tumors, however it’s more basic than the issue was cancer is that are mRNA, copies are DNA to create new cells and when those cells are created they’re not coded with an expiration date. It isn’t widely known but our bodies create approximately 259 billion cells every day and in general they live only for three days, and then they die with the preschool describe date, If they don’t die, they form tumors and that is cancer.
The reason I say, that I feel I failed Tessie., is that if we would’ve not a relied on doctors and not relied on PURLEY faith and her husband would’ve done more research and realize that the only way to live longer with cancer, I emphasize the only way is to monitor and be aware of certain very low levels of substances that are accumulating in her body that can be tracked with things called cancer marker test, which generally are blood Tess’s case there is a very simple test called ACA 27/29 which basically measures the result of a certain enzyme in your blood and if that enzyme is add a measurement of 40 you’re OK, and Tessie’s case it was 4000.
In 2009 this it (CA27/29) was not revealed or taken by our doctors, and once I realized that after doing research we should’ve done years earlier Tess was told that they don’t want to do cancer marker test and they were not 100% reliable and that they wait for symptoms to occur, which in Tess’s case were massive tumors.
The point here is while they may not be 100% reliable like many things in life there can be an early indicator, even if it’s news you don’t want to hear trust me you want to know. My Tessie was fiercely independent, seriously protective of her children and her grandchildren and her husband , her family and relied on her doctors exclusively. She had “hope“ and “faith” in her doctors and God, Tess kept her faith in God however she was let down by her doctors and her husband.
The point of all this is for women and men who have been “lucky“ enough who have discovered you have cancer, you must and I repeat must get a test of your DNA and your mRNA understand mutations that exist because the various cancers she may experience and monitor them whether or not your insurance company covers his test they are critical, if you wait until a tumor
Our a wonderful daughter Victoria . who is of course supported by the worlds greatest son-in-law , has recently given a presentation to 6000 people extolling on the fact that you need to take your life your health your family and your priorities into your hands to monitor them to control them and to do everything you can to achieve the outcome you desire, obviously health and life, and love.
What frustrates me the most and why I feel I let Tessie down, is lack of knowledge which resulted from the lack of analysis. While Victoria was working on her presentation for the conference and emphasizing the need for analysis and information, in regards to meeting your health your life your goals, I realized this
Tessie is in heaven now, and I am here and thank God for Tessie‘s insistence on caring and protecting for her children and her grandchildren and her son-in-law and being protective and analytical throughout her life. However at this point I cannot stand by and not try to help informant increase awareness for other men and women that “remission“ is bullshit, there is no cure for cancer however if you monitor it and you catch it early when it’s at the cellular level and not at the tumor level you can continue to live your life experience the love of your family and your partner. there is no such thing as remission, you must get the INFORMATION you need to slow it done. You can’t prevent it, you can control it.
If anyone has any question , please let me know, I am not any kind of expert but as I tell my children “Perception is not reality, awarement is reality.”
DNA and the concept of MDM( Master Data Management) or Modern ML/AI Data Preparation have many similarities.
“There is a subtle difference between data and information.”
We in IT have complicated and diluted the concept and process of analyzing data and business metrics incredibly in the last few decades. We seem to be focus in on the word data.
And if you consider the primary business objectives of MDM is provide consistent answers with standard business definitions and an understanding of the relationship or mappings of business outcomes to data elements.
DNA vs MDM or IT’s version of DNA.
The graphic I’ve chosen for this post symbolizes the linkage or lineage of human beings to DNA. What I’d like to do is relate the importance of lineage of data to examples of human how DNA communicate lineage and then discuss it in our IT as it relates to business functionality
Living Organisms are very complex as is a company and its data or information.
The genetic information of every living organism is stored inside these nucleic the basic data.
There are two types of nucleic acids(NA) namely:
DNA– Defines Traits, Characteristics
RNA – Communication, transfers information and synthesis.
Lets examine them.
DNA- Defines Traits, Characteristics
DNA-Deoxyribonucleic acid – In most living organisms (except for viruses), genetic information is stored in the form of DNA.
RNA – Communication, transfers information and synthesis
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RNA – can move around in the cells of living organisms and serves as a genetic messenger, passing the information stored in the cell’s DNA from the nucleus to other parts of the cell for protein synthesis.
So here goes this is a bit of a stretch but if you consider DNA is the “Data” and a person the “Information” is created from the communication through the RNA.
To continue the analogy the DNA or chromosomes in and by themselves are out of context. It’s only once they been passed from one person to the next driven by RNA and result in a human being in that they become contextually realized as a human.
Again if we break down human DNA and inspected it, we can tell many things origin, or ancestory , traits of the person possible, diseases of the person, but it needs to be processed for us to understand the actual person.
So my point in relation to various approaches to traditional MDM or Master Data Management yis that this(DNA) is how life is created, it’s science, it’s not a methodology or product in approach a vendor guess work it’s real and the main point is “lineage” is the key
“There is a subtle difference between data and information. Data are the facts or details from which is derived. Individual pieces of data are rarely useful alone. For data to become information, data needs to be put into context.”
Examples of Data and Information as it relates to MDM
The history of temperature readings all over the world for the past 100 years is data.
If this data is organized and analyzed to find that global temperature is rising, then that is information.
“Mislesading” Data”
Data needs to be interpreted and analyzed, it is quite possible — indeed, very probable — that it will be interpreted incorrectly.
When this leads to erroneous conclusions, it is said that the data are misleading. Often this is the result of incomplete data or a lack of context.
For example, your investment in a mutual fund may be up by 5% and you may conclude that the fund managers are doing a great job. However, this could be misleading if the major stock market indices are up by 12%. In this case, the fund has underperformed the market significantly.
Comparison charts
“Synthesis: the combining of the constituent elements of separate material or abstract entities into a single or unified entity ( opposed to analysis, ) the separating of any material or abstract entity into its constituent elements.”
Synthesis in MDM
Communication, transfers information and synthesis, like RNA several companies are prevelant in terms of data movement and replication, in essence data logistics
Defines Traits, Characteristics like DNA many companies have developed and refined products and the techniques required for during these. They are data profiling , domain pattern profiling and record linkage, the basis of transforming data into information .
However lineage is the key, and without this to serve as a connection between data and information, in essence there is no information. And in this case the “information” is the business term from the business glossary.
The integration of data movement capability and the linking of data profiling capabilities can result in providing a business the capabilities answering business question with certitude through the transparency of lineage.
To translate this into “business terms” it’s very similar to providing an audit trail in that a business can ask this questions like what customers are the most profitable look at those customers and then drill into wood products what areas with those profits coming
What lineage accomplishes is to lay a trail of cookie crumbs for data movement but for your business questions, it’s simply makes sure that you can connect the dots as data gets moved and/or translated and/or standardize and or cleansed throughout your enterprise.
And with the simple action of linking data file metadata of files, columns , profiling results to a businesses glossary or business terms, will result in deeply insightful and informative business insight and analysis.
“Analysis the separating of any material or abstract entity into its constituent elements”
In order for a business manager for analyze you need to be able to start the analysis at a understandable business terminology level. And then provide the manager with the ability to decompose or understand lineage from a logical perspective.
There are three essential capabilities required for analysis and utilizing lineage to answer business questions via a meta-data mart and these are very similar to the pattern that exist in DNA.
1. Data profiling and domain(column) analysis as well as fuzzy matching processes that are available in many forms:
a. – Scan all the values within each column and provide statistics(counts) such as minimum value, maximin value, mode(most occuring) value, number of missing value etc…
b. Frequency or Column value Patterns – determine the counts of distinct values within a column and also identify the distinct pattern occurring for all values within a single column and associated counts ie(SSN = 123-45-6789 , SSN PATTERN = ‘999-99-9999’
c. Fuzzy Matching( similarity algorithms) – This capability enables the find the counts of duplicate or similar text values.
2. The results need to be stored is a “Metadata-mart” in order to see the patterns, results and associations providing lineage and retatingraw data to business terms and hierarchies.
3. Visualization and analysis capability to allow for analysis, drill down into data mart aggregated and statistical contents and associated business hierarchies and businessterminology
Underlying each of these analytical capabilities is a set of refined processes, developed and proven code for accomplishing these basic fundamental task.
In future post I will describe how to implement these capabilities with or without vendor products, from a logical perspective.
References:
http://www.diffen.com/difference/Data_vs_Information
Ira Warren Whiteside's Blog - Information Sherpa 