Big Data
Big data is a term used to describe the massive amounts of both structured and unstructured data that many companies can collect on a day-to-day basis. In fact, the amount of data collected has become so large and unwieldy that traditional methods of data processing have become ineffective. Doug Laney, an industry analyst, coined the use of the 3 V’s in the early 2000s in order to describe and better understand the unstoppable force that is big data. Since then, the 3 V’s have widely expanded to include two more V’s; in full, they are Volume, Velocity, Variety, accompanied by Variability and Veracity. Volume obviously pertains to the massive size of big data, while velocity refers to the speed at which the data is generated and variety explains the nature of the data, like whether it is structured or unstructured. Variability addresses the inconsistency of data and veracity assesses the quality of the data and its accuracy. Now that time has passed and most businesses have a fairly good understanding of big data and the difficulties that it imposes, they are faced with the challenge of mastering it.
Big data has an important relation to my class, MIS 2502, in which data analytics was the main focus. When we learned about big data and its real-world demands, our class gained an important perspective into a challenge that we may actually encounter in our future careers. Immediately after, we knew that every piece of knowledge we would learn and every tool we would work with would be entirely beneficial to us. Big data brought real-world meaning to our classroom and greatly enhanced our work with tools like Microsoft Excel, MySQL, and R & RStudio.
While in class, we learned of two current and real-world examples of businesses that harnessed big data and used it to their advantage. First, we learned of the Memphis Police Department and how they interpreted historical crime data, placed police in “crime-prone” areas at certain times, and subsequently lowered the crime rate over time by 31%. Second, we learned of the New York Mets and how they analyzed their big data, made their communications and promotions more “personal”, and subsequently increased corporate sales and increased their ticket base to 14000. Mastering big data ultimately bettered the Memphis Police Department and the New York Mets, and it is incredibly important that every business should do the same.
Bibliography
“What Is Big Data?” SAS.com. SAS Institute Inc. Web. http://www.sas.com/en_us/insights/big-data/what-is-big-data.html
“Big Data.” Wikipedia.org. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. Web. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data
“Blue Crush Continues to Help MPD Combat Crime.” Memphisflyer.com. Memphis Flyer. 12 June 2014. Web. http://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/blue-crush-continues-to-help-mpd-combat-crime/Content?oid=3685313
“New York Mets Sign Analytics to Lead Their Lineup.” SAS.com. SAS Institute Inc. Web. http://www.sas.com/en_us/insights/articles/analytics/New-York-Mets-sign-analytics.html