BAGs

[Benjamin Zimmer]

>From an article on NSA data-mining in the National Journal:

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http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0306/031706nj1.htm
While the NSA was searching for the next generation of data-sifters,
it continued to rely on less sophisticated tools. For an example, the
former government official who spoke to NJ cited applications that
organize data into broad categories, allowing analysts to see some
relationships but obscuring some of the nuance in the underlying
information. The results of this kind of category analysis can be
displayed on a graph.
But the graph might reveal only how many times a particular word
appears in a conversation, not necessarily the significance of the
word or how it relates to other words. Technologists sarcastically
call these diagrams BAGs -- big-ass graphs.
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--Ben Zimmer

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