bUsIness AnaLYtICs
Lesson #3
UNDERSTANDING BIG DATA AND DATA ANALYTICS
Business Analytics, BI, Big Data, Data Mining-What’s the
Difference?
Business Analytics – tools to explore past data to
gain insights into future business decisions.
BI – tools and techniques to turn data into
meaningful information.
Big Data – data sets that are so large or complex
that traditional data processing applications are
inadequate.
Data Mining – tools for discovering patterns in large
data sets.
Businesses Need Support for Decision-Making
Uncertain economics.
Rapidly changing environments
Global competition
Demanding customers
Taking advantage of information acquired by
companies is a Critical Source Factor.
Characteristics of Data for Good Decision-Making
---Better Quality Data-Characteristics
ACCURACY – Accurate enough for intended purposes:
• Balance with use, cost, effort, timeliness
• Capture close to point of activity
• Make accuracy compromises clear
VALIDITY – Compliance with requirements:
• Application of definitions
• Consistency over time
• Consistency with others
RELIABILITY – Collection processes consistent:
• …over time
• …for multiple collection points
• …between collection systems
TIMELINESS – To influence decisions:
• Capture quickly after the event
• Available quickly enough
• Available frequently enough
RELEVANCE – Data relevant to intended purpose:
• Periodic review of requirements
• Quality assurance and feedback process
• Use carefully for other purposes
COMPLETENESS – Monitor quality to match data needs:
• Missing data
• Invalid data
• Incomplete data
The Information Gap
The shortfall between gathering information and using
it for decision making.
➢ Firms have inadequate data warehouses.
➢ Business Analysts spend 2 data a week gathering
and formatting data, instead of performing analysis.
(Data Warehousing Institute).
➢ Business Intelligence (BI) seeks to bridge the
information gap.
What is Big Data?
Massive sets of unstructured/semi-structured
data from web traffic, social media, sensors, etc.
Petabytes, exabytes of data
Volumes too great for typical DBMS
Information from multiple internal and external
sources:
- Transactions
- Social Media
- Enterprise Content
- Sensors
- Mobile Devices
In the last minute there were…….
- 204 million emails sent
- 61,000 hours of music listened to on
Pandora
- 20 million photo views
- 100,000 tweets
- 6 million views & 277,000 Facebook Logins
- 2+ million Google searches
- 3 million uploads on Flickr
