III: Small: Collaborative Research: Conflicts to Harmony: Integrating Massive Data by Trustworthiness Estimation and Truth Discovery

大数据带来了巨大的挑战，不仅在数据量方面，而且在其动态性和多样性方面。来自不同来源的对同一组对象或事件的多个描述不可避免地导致数据或信息不一致。然后，在相互冲突的数据或信息中，区分哪个数据源是可靠的或哪个信息是正确的是至关重要的。准确的信息被称为真实，消息来源提供准确信息的机会被表示为消息来源的可靠性或可信度。该项目的目标是通过整合来源可靠性评估和真相发现，在没有监督的情况下发现真相。开发了一个统一的框架来对复杂的可信性因素、异质数据类型、增量和并行计算以及源和数据依赖进行建模，从而能够从多个相互冲突的异质、不同、相关、巨大、分散和流的数据源中推断出真实性和可信性。该项目为数据集成、信息理解和决策做出了切实的贡献，并有利于许多必须基于从不同来源提取的正确信息来做出关键决策的应用。该项目的研究成果被纳入课程材料和项目，并用于培训学生和新一代研究人员，特别是女性和少数民族学生。有关该项目的更多信息，请参阅项目网站：http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~jing/truth.htm

Big data leads to big challenges, not only in the volume of data but also in its dynamics and variety. Multiple descriptions about the same set of objects or events from different sources unavoidably lead to data or information inconsistency. Then, among conflicting pieces of data or information, it is crucial to tell which data source is reliable or which piece of information is correct. Accurate information is referred to as the truth and the chance of a source providing accurate information is denoted as source reliability or trustworthiness. The objective of this project is to detect truths without supervision, by integrating source reliability estimation and truth finding. A unified framework is developed to model complex trustworthiness factors, heterogeneous data types, incremental and parallel computation, and source and data dependencies so that truth and trustworthiness can be inferred from multiple conflicting sources of heterogeneous, disparate, correlated, gigantic, scattered, and streaming data.This project makes tangible contributions to data integration, information understanding and decision making, and benefits many applications where critical decisions have to be made based on the correct information extracted from diverse sources. Research results of this project are integrated into course materials and projects, and into training students and new generation researchers, especially female and minority students. For further information about this project, please refer to the project website: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~jing/truth.htm