Big Data for Dummies

Big Data tries to efficiently manage the huge amount of information we produce.

It is a very fashionable term now that can produce different sensations, curiosity, fear, uncertainty … According to what we are told is something that will change our habits and transform our lives, hopefully, in most cases for good.

An example is the use made of our data Amazon or Google, which constantly remind us what we like, what we can buy, where we can go … It really produces vertigo the amount of information they handle us making predictions that in many cases seem miraculous.

Have you stopped to think about the amount of data that you generate yourself every day using mobile phones, tables, computers, generating, viewing or consulting texts, images, videos or music? The units of measurement of data are already counted in petabytes or even in zetabytes … Big Data tries to efficiently manage this huge amount of information.

Another important section in the field of data exploitation is the amount of information generated by the multitude of devices connected to each other (IoT).
One of the areas of greatest application is in the field of Marketing and sales with which you can study and predict behaviors and preferences of our customers. To give an example of application many insurers already offer important discounts to clients that allow them to monitor their vital signs or habits of life, sports, nutrition, etc.

Another very current example that has generated a certain scandal has been the use made by the Cambridge Analytics consultancy to help Donald Trump to win the American elections using personal data from Facebook to try to influence the vote.

Big Data aims to transform information into knowledge to improve decision making and to make predictions with an increasingly approximate level of accuracy.
In conclusion, we can say that one of the distinguishing features of Big Data is the ability to model and predict certain behaviors of the human being based on the trace left by their data.