We’d like to invite you to check out the following theory-oriented articles in our Fall 2012 issue dedicated to Big Data:

• Jelani Nelson, “Sketching and streaming algorithms for processing massive data”
• Ronitt Rubinfeld, “Taming big probability distributions”
• Jeff Ullman, “Designing good MapReduce algorithms”
• Ashwin Machanavajjhala and Jerome P. Reiter, “Big Privacy”

This issue of XRDS was edited by a multidisciplinary team of students – Aditya Parameswaran of Stanford, Andrew Cron of Duke and Huy L. Nguyen of Princeton. From the editors’ letter:

“It has been an interesting time for big data with innovations coming simultaneously from theorists, system builders, and scientists or application designers. We hope to provide readers with an idea of the interplay between developments in these three different communities … [that] together drive forward the development of big data analysis.”

Hope you enjoy reading this issue (feel free to let us know what you think in the comments)!