Big Data Introduction: Understanding Data and Big Data

The popularity of Data Science has grown manifold over the last few years because companies use the massive amount of collected data to understand their customers and their behavior better.

Big Data is a collection of data that is huge in volume, yet growing exponentially with time.

Traditional data management tools cannot efficiently handle Big Data due to its large size and complexity.

Data refers to the quantities, characters, or symbols on which operations are performed by a computer, which may be stored and transmitted in the form of electrical signals and recorded on magnetic, optical, or mechanical recording media.

Every click on the internet, every bank transaction, every video watched on YouTube, every email sent, and every like on Instagram posts contribute to the generation of Big Data.

Companies find it logical to use the massive amount of data collected to understand their customers and their behavior better.

Big data is a term that describes large, hard-to-manage volumes of data – both structured and unstructured.

The New York Stock Exchange generates about one terabyte of new trade data per day.

The concept of Big Data gained popularity in the early-mid 2000s.

500+ terabytes of new data get ingested into the databases of social media site Facebook every day.

Transaction processing systems, customer databases, documents, emails, medical records, internet clickstream logs, mobile apps, and social networks are examples of sources that contribute to big data.

A single Jet engine can generate 10+ terabytes of data in 30 minutes of flight time.

Companies use big data in their systems to improve operations, provide better customer service, create personalized marketing campaigns, and make faster and more informed business decisions.

Big data provides valuable insights into customers that companies can use to refine their marketing, advertising, and promotions in order to increase customer engagement and conversion rates.

Images, videos, and audio files are forms of big data, and many big data applications involve streaming data that is processed and collected on a continual basis.

Businesses that use big data effectively hold a potential competitive advantage over those that don't because they're able to make faster and more informed business decisions.