The concept of big data has been around for years; most companies now are taking it more seriously than before. During company interviews, more and more questions related to big data appear. However, people realized that big data is important somehow, yet what actually it is and why it matters are the questions most people don’t know.
What is Big Data?
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The word “Big Data” has more meanings than actual big data, it does not only refer to a huge amount of data but it also refers to related technology. It is important to realize that big data comes in many shapes and from people’s daily lives. For example, the social media that men watched are different from what women watched. Everyday people upload thousands of hundreds of photos to Facebook or Instagram. Also, people share their lives with twitter and other social apps. Data is collected from our devices such as computers and smartphones, and it transmits information on what we do. Soon, however, that is just the beginning, 90% of the data in the world today was created in the last two years, and data will keep increasing exponentially.
Above is the rate of growth of data since 2005 to 2015(forecast) – IDC research
Why is big data important?
Big data could be invaluable for business. It could provide a window into the lives of customers that people never previously imagined. To illustrate, based on the example above, when companies, such as Google or Youtube, collected what people were actually watching every day, they may be able to predict what people are like according to their special algorithms. One simple example is that Youtube put different advisements according to what media people are watching. In this case, people are more likely to click the link of advisements instead of just skipping it.
Another importance that came from big data is big data analytics. In the Youtube example, if they wrongly analytics the data, they might put wrong advisements that have nothing related to the audiences, in this case, no one would care about the advisements and they would just ignore it. By correctly using big data analysis, people are able to pick out the relevant parts from data and find the hidden patterns, correlations, and other insights. Based on what people found in dig data analysis, people are able to make faster, better decisions.
