Big Data
Big data is a term used to describe the growth, availability and use data. There are three main components that form big data; they are volume, variety, and velocity. The large volume of data is both structured and unstructured but out of the two, unstructured data makes up about 90% of big data. The unstructured data comes from things such as email, videos, social media, mobile phones, and the internet. There are many variations of data, from numbers to text to image data. The pace that data is being created at is incredible, 90% of data in the world today was created only 2 years ago and it is estimate that nearly 2.2 million terabytes of new data is created every day. Big data is important not because of its size but rather how organizations and business will take advantage of it and use it so that they can benefit from it.
In our MIS2502 class, we use different programs to sort data and analyze them. Using MySQL, we were able to extract or enter information into a database. We could look things up with commands to get the information we needed. We also use SAS Enterprise Miner to look at data and analyze them. With SAS we could use different methods to look at data such as clustering, decision trees, and graphs that can help us make decisions.
A case of big data being using use is the website Amazon. They collect massive amounts of data from its user so that they can understand the user’s buying habits. With the data, Amazon makes suggestion on what would interest users based on the users past buying habits. Amazon uses big data not only to sell things to customers but also suggest books, movies, and tv shows that the user may be interested in. Amazon uses big data in order to make the tailor the shopping experience to that of the user’s interest and as a result, Amazon is one of the most successful online businesses.
Reference
SAS. “Big Data- What is it” SAS.com, May 2013
Autonomy. “What is big data” Autonomy.com, May 2013
http://www.autonomy.com/content/Technology/what-is-big-data/index.en.html
Madden, Sean. “How companies like Amazon use big data to make you love them” May 2012. May 2013
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669551/how-companies-like-amazon-use-big-data-to-make-you-love-them