Over the past few months the phrase “Big data” has been used in news segments and the telecoms industry but what is big data?
Well the truth is big data is exactly as the name suggests, a term used for any large amount of data that has the potential to be extracted for information. It can often be broken down into 3V’s. The volume of data, the variety of data types and finally the velocity at which the data must be processed.
So, what exactly is this data, well it can come from a lot of different sources, businesses sales records, results of an experiment in real-time or patient healthcare records. As you can imagine, these different sources mean the data may also be stored in a variety of ways, SQL databases or document files, it may also be integrated with other data sources for example, when launching a new product, a user may take data from previous sales and online data. Velocity refers to how quickly the big data is analysed. Every project involving big data needs to be absorbed and analysed and an answer or result is then given based on an overall query.
Ultimately, the implications of big data are huge, however it is dependent on how human operators understand and apply the resulting data and responses. The analysis of big data has huge potential in the world of artificial intelligence and machine learning as these processes mimic actions based on patterns found in collected data. It is difficult to know when these applications will take place however the ever-changing technological world is finding new and exciting ways to apply this technology to change the outlook of our futures.
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