Big Data: What It Is and Why It Matters
Big Data is the study of large data sets that can be analyzed to reveal valuable insights. It is often used in the business world to give companies an edge over their competitors by creating detailed customer profiles or understanding how trends in the market are developing.
But Big Data is also almost any field of knowledge, from law enforcement and medicine to biology and psychology. More people are turning to Big Data for their work at hospitals, universities, non-profit organizations, governments, and industrial corporations.
In this way, large datasets can be used to analyze behavioral or medical trends. Social networks and mobile device users can also be monitored to get a better idea of how people are interacting with each other and what they want. The use of Big Data has also extended into areas of social media marketing. It is believed that the trend will continue to grow as more information is being generated by sensors and devices connected to the Internet of Things (IoT).
The term “Big Data” was first used in 1988 in a discussion about the future of information management by computer scientist Jim Gray. It wasn’t until 2001 when it gained significant traction among government agencies, businesses, research institutions, and technology vendors. The term Big Data refers to the idea that data is becoming so large and complex that it can no longer be handled using traditional means.
The amount of data being generated today is impossible to comprehend. Roughly 2.5 quintillion bytes of information are created every day—the equivalent of over 250 million filing cabinets! But how big is Big Data really? If you took all the digital information in the world and put it on a CD-ROM, you would have enough disk space for only three full copies. This shows there’s simply no way to process all of this data manually anymore— we need different ways to analyze it.
Big Data has many different applications that take advantage of complex algorithms and computer programs. New fields like data mining and data analytics have emerged to help researchers sort through this information to extract findings. If Big Data is used effectively, it will have a great impact on our lives, from better education and health care systems to help us more easily make big decisions about the world around us.
This is a short introduction to the concept of Big Data. We will cover three key questions:
- What is Big Data?
- How does it help us?
- Where is it going?
1. What Is Big Data?
Ready-made examples of the term ” Big Data” can be found in many areas, including social media, healthcare, and geography. But it’s hard to understand what Big Data really means until you look beyond simple and obvious examples to see how people are using it and what they are doing with the information gathered. Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are basically big data sets. Most of these companies’ income comes from advertising rather than subscribers. But Google and Yahoo!, for example, generate billions of dollars per year from selling their search engines to businesses, governments, and individuals. In healthcare, you might hear the term ” Big Data” while looking at an MRI image or a medical report. Many hospitals are turning to Big Data to develop treatments for diseases that were once considered incurable.
2. How Does It Help Us?
The best way to understand Big Data is through a real-world example. Here’s an experiment was done in Brazil that illustrates the power of these methods:
Researchers wanted to find out why there were children falling through the floorboards of their school. To do this, they examined data from every schoolchild in Brazil between 2005 and 2010, including information on mobility and learning patterns, body mass index, socioeconomic status, and the number of years they were attending school. They analyzed this data to show significant correlations between suffering injury as a child and doing poorly at school.
This example shows how data mining can help doctors identify the causes of health problems and discover new ways to prevent them. And it supports the idea that learning from Big Data is like a game of chance: it’s impossible to predict what will happen. But we can increase our chances when doing so by using mathematical algorithms and other analytical methods.
3. Where Is It Going?
Scientists are currently trying to develop better ways of analyzing Big Data as a means of solving major problems, but there are many challenges to overcome before we will be able to make a real difference in our daily lives. For example, people might not accept some results from this kind of research—even if they do prove valuable.
Conclusion
Big Data is the future. It’s a gold mine for companies that want to know what their customers are thinking and doing, but it also comes with risks like hacking or data breaches. In this article, we’ve discussed some of the most important things you should be aware of before jumping headfirst into big data analytics. If you’re still on the fence about whether or not your company needs to start using big data now, let us know and our team will help answer any questions you may have! We can’t wait to hear from you soon!
Source: Big Data: What It Is and Why It Matters – DZone Big Data