3 Basic Concepts in the Data Revolution
The usage of mobile devices and Internet of Things (IoT) has made our world full of data. Journalists, bloggers, politicians, professionals, sociologists … They all talk about data every day and everywhere. In our daily data discussion, we always hear about the concepts of Big Data, Data Viz and Open Data, which define three important aspects of data – the problem, the interpretation and the sharing.
Big Data – The problem of data
Our daily digital interactions contribute to the increase of the data. Potentially, everyone is creating data – companies, governments and individuals. For example, by sharing photos or videos, social networking, online shopping etc., all these activities, are creating more and more data that is difficult to be handled. We often hear that the data volume we currently generate in two days is equivalent to the total data volume generated by humanity before 2003.
In addition to data volume, problems often appear in formats and speeds as well. The three problems of data constitute what is commonly called “Big Data”. The Big Data phenomenon is considered one of the major IT challenges for the decade 2010-2020 – storage, sharing, analysis and visualization of large amounts and diversity of data and will challenge our information systems!
The discussion on Big Data processing and analysis is enormous, especially for the industry trends, or the fight against crime. Tim O’Reilly, CEO of the famous publishing house O’Reilly and John Battelle, analyst and blogger, has deftly explained that “companies must learn to exploit real-time data as key signals that drive a feedback loop much more efficient for product development, customer service and resource allocation” .
Big Data is a challenge, but it is also a great business opportunity for companies.
Data Viz (Data visualization) – The interpretation of data
The data we processed can be used to create charts, graphs or maps, and then can be further converted, tested, cleaned, filled and finally be represented by the data visualizations, or called Data Viz. Data Viz can be gathered in the form of videos, photos or graphics.
Data Viz is a presentation and storytelling tool used in order to convince, persuade and present the information and to make data more meaningful.
Open Data – The sharing of data
The Open Data is the machine readable data that is accessible to the public. Today it is possible to know the elevation of the pavements in a city, real-time locations of buses, or find ratings of family doctors close to your home.
Other uses of Open Data include:
- Exploration – Users can directly access to online data to collect information they are interested in.
- Innovation – Developers can use Open Data for application development and then offer a service or an application to improve our daily life.
- Marketing – Consider the case of a company that wants to revalue its customer database based on geographical criteria with the objective is to link the mailing addresses of customers so that the company can reach the desired population.
