Big Data does not Play the Magic Sometimes and That’s Why

“The key benefit of Big Data is not about data, it’s about information. Data becoming available everywhere does not have the same meaning of Useful information becoming available everywhere. Where information is not available or does not provide clear direction, we need to use our knowledge and experience to bridge the gap. ” (Jason Li on icrunchdata News)

There has been a lot of discussion on Big Data does not equal useful information. For example, Tavish Srivastava summarized a list of 5 things Big Data can and cannot do.

What data can do:

• Diagnostic analysis
• Predictive analysis
• Find relation between unknown elements/events
• Prescriptive analysis
• Monitoring an event as it happens

What Big Data cannot do:

• Predict a definitive future
• Imputation of new data source
• Find a creative solution to a business problem
• Find solution to a not so well-defined problem
• Data management/Simplify data for a new data source

Big data surely plays an important role to help people gain insignts and that’s why companies around the world are so excited about Big Data and are investing billions of dollars into Big Data. However, Big Data does not always have the answers, or have the right answer. Jason Li explained in his article on why Big Data may do wrong:

• Big Data might be inaccurate
• Big Data can create big bias
• Big Data might give wrong answer
• Big Data does not equal useful information

For people who are embracing Big Data, “here today and yet to come, will enable organizations to entertain their own goals around leveraging old and new data to uncover opportunities and differentiation. The organizations that are slower to improve the storage, management and accessibility of their big datasets, may be left behind by their competitors who are already tackling these issues and becoming more efficient.”

“As we move to a smart and connected economy, the successful or unsuccessful transformation of bits to data, data to information, information to knowledge, and knowledge to wisdom, will determine the organizations who will be the winners over the next 10 year” (Craig Warthen)