MIS 2502 – Data Analytics – Big Data
What is Big Data?
Big Data is a term used to describe the exponential growth and availability of data (SAS). Big Data is defined more accurately through the three Vs of Big Data: volume, velocity, and variety. Data is constantly being stored all over the world, and since there is so much of it we must determine how relevant the data is and create value from it. We also need to store the data very quickly in order to analyze it in real-time. There are many formats of data that we need to analyze in order to get the results we want.
Although a company has lots of data in their database, it must know what to do with the data to get meaningful results. Analyzing Big Data is important because it can help a company find answers to company related problems such as: cost and time reductions, new product development, and smarter business decision making (SAS). Without analyzing and reducing Big Data into smaller meaningful results, the large amounts of data would be meaningless.
Big Data coincides directly with MIS2502- Data Analytics. The concepts we learned in this class include: relational data modeling, SQL, dimensional data modeling, and SAS. Each of these concepts are a small segment of how Big Data is broken down. In Data Analytics, we analyzed data on a small scale, viewing and analyzing small amounts of data compared to Big Data. We have practiced data analytic techniques through programs such as MySQL and SAS. We learned to use clustering in SAS Enterprise Miner to summarize data by putting like data into clusters. These tools have given us a taste of what analyzing real Big Data is like.
A great example of a company that uses Big Data is UPS. UPS has huge amounts of data in their database, stemming from the packages that are sent worldwide to their trucks. Data analysts analyze UPS truck’s speed, direction, and breaking to increase delivery efficiency. UPS tracks around 39.5 million packages daily, storing more than 16 petabytes of data (UPS). Overall, Big Data can help a business solve business problems. The more data we have, the more accurate our analyses will be.
Works Cited
- “Big Data.” What Is ? SAS, n.d. Web. 05 May 2014.
- “Big Data.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 05 May 2014. Web. 05 May 2014.
- “Cluster Analysis Procedures.” Cluster Analysis. SAS, n.d. Web. 05 May 2014.