Data Analytic Topic: Big Data
Brief Overview
On a daily basis, companies are flooded with tremendous amount of data. The term “Big Data” is one of the hottest buzzwords in the business world today. It is a collection of billions of pieces of data that is ever so expanding at a rapid pace. This is largely due to the rise of higher quality computers, the Internet, and technology that can store and organize data on databases, where accessibility is way easier than before. These databases can consist of data about customers and business practices that range from item purchases to yearly income. For a company to gain the advantage over the competition they would need to effectively analyze Big Data. This may result in cut costs, improved time efficiency, and identify trends.
Relation to Topics in MIS 2502
In our Data Analytic class, we explored how having a lot of data and analyzing it can provide a firm with an upper hand in the competition. We also learned about how there is two types of data, one being Transactional, which is real-time data and the other is Analytical, which is historical data. Another topic we discussed in class was Clustering and Segmentation, which is the process of grouping data to observe similarities and differences between each grouping. Furthermore, we covered the association rule mining, which is a technique used to analysis Big Data to figure out which items predict the occurrence of other items.
An Example of Big Data:
Many if not all retailers use Big Data as their way of trying to find out trends that are popular with their customers. One of the biggest online retail giant is Amazon, it uses Big Data quite often in their advertising algorithms. They record massive amount of data on their customers; names, addresses, payment, and search histories that are all stored in a huge database with over 152 million customer accounts. Amazon then uses this data to offer each customer a specific set of items that are related to their previous purchases or searches on their website.
References
Marr, Bernard. “What Is Big Data? A Super Simple Explanation for Everyone.” Bernard Marr, www.bernardmarr.com/default.asp?contentID=766.
Marr, Bernard. “How Is Big Data Used in Practice? 10 Use Cases Everyone Must Read.” Bernard Marr, www.bernardmarr.com/default.asp?contentID=1076.
Rijmenam, Mark. “How Amazon Is Leveraging Big Data.” Datafloq – Connecting Data and People,
datafloq.com/read/amazon-leveraging-big-data/517.