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A brief explanation of the big data phenomenon
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EMERGING TREND OF BIG DATA
The 21st century has brought with itself an explosion of data and increasing technological ability of our generation to collect, analyse and manipulate enormous amounts of data is what big data is all about. Being a student of a reputed b-school, big data, its analysis and emerging trends across the globe has definitely been a topic of consideration. The basic question is data analysis and big data one and the same? Well, the difference lies in the enormity of the data size. Huge amount of data reveals better trends, unseen correlations and things which could not be comprehended from a smaller data set. Basically apart from answering the usual ‘why’, big data also helps to answer ‘what’
Thus the concept of big data would definitely bring about revolutionary changes in each and every aspect of our lives. From political to economic, social to technological and legal as well as environmental, every aspect would see the emerging trends of big data.
Political trends-
One would hardly think of politics and data going hand in hand. Well, today political scientists across the globe believe data to be an integral part of political strategies. Computer-automated analysis of blog postings, web traffic analysis post a political speech, tag cloud analysis, social network ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ analysis provide a much more educated view of the public sentiment.
Dan Wagner, targeting director for the democratic national committee used the big data analysis to predict election wins months in advance. Voter opinions were analysed not in samples but as a huge chunk of data, where every voter opinion was analysed and studied individually and from a variety of aspects. This helped the c...
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...cting better emission control mechanisms customised as per emission levels of every city across the earth.
Big Data would help businesses understand and control environmental impacts that goes beyond their operational understanding. A few relevant industry examples include:
“BT looked at the entire carbon footprint of its business, finding that emissions outside its own direct control counted for 92% of the total. And 64% of that impact was just in BT’s upstream supply chain.” – Carbon Trust
“Revolutionary Big Data Environmental Analysis Indicates Declining Animal Populations in Studied Tropical Forests--HP-powered technology develops early warning system for threatened species”
For this kind of warning system HP has used 2 platforms-
• HP Vertica Analytics Platform
• The Wildlife Picture Index (WPI) Analytics System
• SOURCE: HP PRESS RELEASE, DECEMBER 10,2013
In Nicholas Carr’s article “How Social Media Is Ruining Politics”, Carr writes about the effects that social media has on politics. In his article, Carr focuses more on the negative effect that social media has when it comes to politics. Some points that he makes about social media include specific examples like the recent presidential campaigns, how other technological advances over the years have effected politics, and the effectiveness that social media has on politics
"If industry is to be successful in dealing with public opinion . . . it must learn the language of the people, it must consider the study of public opinion as important as any phase of its operations. It must recognize that public opinion can be measured, and utilize the increasingly scientific methods developing today for gauging it"(Ross)
Digrazia, J, Mckelvey, K, Bollen, J, Rojas, F & Martinez, LM . (2013). More Tweets, More Votes: Social Media as a Quantitative Indicator of Political Behavior. PLoS ONE, 8 (11), [1-5].
Thesis: With the recent emergence of social media into the mainstream, corruption within government functions has never been more manipulative of citizens. This is also clearly linked to the paralleled popularity of abbreviations and emojis when communicating, instead of using traditional English language. In the case of American politics, no one party or person can maintain (checked and balanced) control of the country for over eight years, so the 1984 concept of the government controlling the way citizens think is honestly ridiculous. What is very much possible, as seen in this past U.S. election, is the misuse of data to psychologically influence prospective voters to not vote because of their probable candidate preference.
If auditors can look at a complete population, they may not have a great defense if they missed a “smoking gun” since they looked at all the data (Alles and Glen). However, this data may not be valid which raises the importance of the auditor understanding where the data came from and how reliable it is. Not only this, it will be interesting to see how standards consider big data evidence. While it most likely will not be as reliable as confirmations, it would be a challenge to figure out how much the auditors could rely on it. Furthermore, higher education would most likely play a role in helping their graduates understand data and how to use technology to be not only more efficient but also ensure they are able to use sound professional judgement while using big data.
You may ask what big data analytics is. Well according to SAS, the leading company in business analytics software and services describes big data analytics as “the process of examining big data to uncover hidden patterns, unknown correlations and other useful information that can be used to make better decisions.” As the goal of many companies which is to seek insights into the massive amount of structured, unstructured, and binary data at their disposal to improve business decisions and outcomes, it is evident why big data analytics is a big deal. “Big data differs from traditional data gathering due to that it captures, manages, and processes the data with low-latency. It also one or more of the listed characteristics: high volume, high velocity, or high variety. Big data comes from sensors, devices, video/audio, networks, log files, web, and social media which much of it is generated in real time and in a very large scale.”(IBM) In other words, companies moving towards big data analytics are able to see faster results but it continues to reach exceptional levels moving faster than the average person can maintain.
...ch Reips. ““Big Data”: Big Gaps of Knowledge in the Field of Internet Science.” International Journal of Internet Science 7.1 (2012): n. pag. Web. 16 Mar. 2014.
Although, many may argue political candidates should not need to constantly argue and pushing their ads on people is not correct, the media has played a role in ensuring people have all the information that is necessary to vote for political candidates. Advertising also allows for candidates to use the act of targeting which “ is used throughout the advertising industry to make sure that ads and messages reach the right audience” (Satterfield) In essence, “If a candidate wants to address the concerns of women, college students, retired people, Latinos or any other group of voters, they can now tailor their messages. Just as advertisers on Facebook are able to use analytics and targeted advertising, so can candidates and politicians. Thus, if you notice that political messages seem to be talking to you personally, this is no accident.” (Satterfield) Which would lead to many stating and invasion of privacy is on the verge due to the amount of information given to candidates about their potential viewers.
“The Big data phenomenon is driven by staggering and energizing advances in innovation. Exploiting these advances in the agricultural division could require new hierarchical linkages to be shaped – amongst suppliers and clients and among contenders.
SAS states that Big data is a term that describes the large volume of data – both structured and unstructured – that inundates a business on a day-to-day basis. But it’s not the amount of data that’s important. It is what organizations do with the data that matters. Big data can be analyzed for insights that lead to better decisions and strategic business moves. They also describe big data into five categories.
The future of the United States government, policy structure, and elections will evolve around the emerging social media. How well politicians and government officials use the technology could shape the policies of our country.
Information privacy, or data privacy is the relationship between distribution of data, technology, the public expectation of privacy, and the legal and political issues surrounding them.
Big data will then be defined as large collections of complex data which can either be structured or unstructured. Big data is difficult to notate and process due to its size and raw nature. The nature of this data makes it important for analyses of information or business functions and it creates value. According to Manyika, Chui et al. (2011: 1), “Big data is not defined by its capacity in terms of terabytes but it’s assumed that as technology progresses, the size of datasets that are considered as big data will increase”.
Individuals and organizations within current information society have at their disposal vast amount of data which potential has not fully been used. With the increasing availability of data there is a need to organize data and to extract knowledge from such data. Data are being accumulated in different formats and databases, which are usually not connected together, therefore leading to the inefficient use of valuable information.
Cloud computing is a type of computing that depends on sharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personal device to handle applications.