Data Analytics- Big Data
Big Data is a term used to describe vast amounts of data that technology has recently made possible to collect. Data scientists have characterized big data by its volume, variety and velocity. The substantial volume of new data can come from a countless number of sources. For example, data can be collected each time you purchase a grocery store item or visit a website from your smartphone. This newly created data can be stored in a variety of formats. These formats include a structured database like SQL, a semi-structured text file within NoSQL, or an unstructured server log on a browser. Velocity refers to the speed in which stored data is processed and analyzed. The variety of data formats can often slow the velocity of the analytics process. The challenge many data scientists face today is cleansing and transforming data into the best form for analytics- and doing so quickly.
Big Data is being used to personalize marketing campaigns, increase profitability, and improve customer service. An example of a company using big data would be the streaming networking service Spotify. This company studies the listening patterns of its users and can make personalized song recommendations based on them. For example, if you listen to a particular artist, Spotify can use big data analytics to determine the probability of you liking a related artist. In MIS 2502, we spent some time working with R and R Studio. We learned to determine the likeliness of events by creating decision trees and clusters in R studio. I imagine Spotify uses a similar tool to analyze their big data and create recommendations. Big data analytics seems to be a breakthrough in the business world, and I am hoping to work with it in the future.
Bibliography:
SearchDataManagement. (2019). What is big data? – Definition from WhatIs.com. [online] Available at: https://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/definition/big-data [Accessed 19 Apr. 2019].
Intellipaat.com. (2019). 7 Examples of Big Data. [online] Available at: https://intellipaat.com/blog/7-big-data-examples-application-of-big-data-in-real-life/ [Accessed 19 Apr. 2019].