The Excellent Wins of Big Data
You’ve probably heard of Big Data before, but you might not be sure about all the benefits brought by Big Data. So today, we will be looking at the W’s of Big Data — not the well-known five W’s of Who, What, Where, When, and Why, but the Wins of Big Data in many different applications.
Before we dive into this topic, let’s start with a short summary of big data. Big data is often described using 3 V’s: Volume, Velocity, and Variety (some people use 5, 10, 14, or more V’s, but I think that is too much). Volume stands for the sheer massive amount of data from a myriad of sources that are used for big data analysis — terabytes to petabytes of information. Velocity stands for the speed at which new data is created and used for different purposes. There are more than 8.5 billion searches on Google every day, which can be analyzed almost in real time thanks to modern computing power. Variety stands for the many types of data that are available such as numbers, text, audio, and video, which are often unstructured and ‘raw,’ meaning that they are not listed in neat, categorized data sheets. Big data can show us the ‘big picture’ of trends and relations not visible or decipherable from small data sets, while also being more accurate.
The first W is ‘Well-being’. Big Data can improve our well-being by improving the healthcare industry. Using big data analytics on the genomic data, the information generated by wearable devices (Fig.1), or electronic health records of millions of patients allows more personalized, accurate, and effective treatments and decisions, and also helps predict patients at higher risk. Furthermore, big data can be used to ‘optimize’ the treatment process to reduce healthcare costs. For example, by comparing your data with millions of other people, Big Data can say, “using treatment A+B with X days in hospital stay is the most effective and cheapest treatment”. If you have a problem in your heart, big data can warn you before the symptoms. Pharmaceutical and biotech companies such as Novo Nordisk and AstraZeneca have already started using big data in their product development, to develop innovative drugs and reduce trial time and costs. Big data can make healthcare cheaper, safer, and more effective for everyone.
The second W is ‘Warning’. By predicting the future, big data can alert us about what could happen. Meteorology is one area where big data can be used in this way. More sensors and data allow more and more accurate weather forecasting, from whether it will be raining next Wednesday, to more severe events like typhoons, climate change, and natural disaster patterns. In India, in April of 2019, 1.2 million people were able to evacuate in advance from one of the most powerful cyclones to hit India in the past 20 years (Cyclone ‘Fani’) thanks to prediction using data such as Figure 2 above. Although the image above only shows the path of the cyclones, the real data used would have had every possible meteorological data from temperature, wind speed to humidity. In other areas, big data can be used to detect and notify us about frauds, cheaper prices, epidemic outbreaks, weaknesses, and potential failures in cybersecurity defense as well as physical structures like bridges and airplane wings.
The third W is “Wants”. When we watch YouTube or Netflix, listen to music, scroll through Instagram, or shop online, we are always recommended something, even if we directly search a keyword. Suggestion algorithms may seem simple: just recommend something similar. However, choosing the best out of thousands or millions of other similar videos or music for you is no easy task. For example, the YouTube algorithm combines many different factors, such as whether you have watched a similar channel or not, the ‘engagement’ of a video, and the preference of a similar audience group to ensure YouTube is not only recommending the videos with the most views. Additionally, YouTube occasionally predicts what similar yet new content you might like and recommends novel topics. Big data can be used to predict the wants of customers in every imaginable market, including videos and music. As a result, users can be provided with the most satisfactory service and products while suppliers can find the right customer base and maximize profit.
The fourth and final word doesn’t actually start with a W, but with an E, making the list three W’s and one E. The last word is efficiency. Big data can be used to optimize and find the best solution according to the circumstances for a myriad of areas, from transport to working environments to education. Generally, it can be used to improve customer service, and communications and reduce errors. For transport, big data is used to plan routes for all types of transport on sea, land, and air, and manage congestion and traffic control. There may be no roads in the sky or sea, but there are always safer, faster, or less fuel-consuming routes depending on many factors that can be analyzed using big data. Japanese shipping company Mitsui O.S.K Line’s ‘Focus’ autonomous navigation system (Fig. 4) uses sensors that see the location of other ships and gauge the height of waves and weather patterns to avoid collisions and find optimal routes. In education, personalized courses, materials, and AI tutors can make learning more effective. Big data has the ability to increase efficiency in various areas of our society and improve our lives.
It would be wrong to say big data has only positive consequences, and you could probably make a list of negative words for big data. Almost everybody can remember an experience when they were creeped out by a targeted ad on a website, knowing what they searched for minutes ago. However, big data is already here, and it is not going to go away. If big data is here to stay, we should learn more about it and find better ways to use big data in our society and everyday life.
Figure References:
Figure 1: https://blog.frontiersin.org/2018/09/09/physiology-wearable-devices-review/
Figure 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:North_Indian_cyclone_tracks_1970-2005.jpg
Figure 3: https://www.pngwing.com/en/search?q=Social+networking+service
Source References:
https://www.oracle.com/big-data/what-is-big-data/
https://www.knowledgehut.com/blog/data-science/top-data-science-case-studies
https://www.knowledgehut.com/blog/big-data/benefits-of-big-data
https://www.mongodb.com/big-data-explained/examples
https://statusbrew.com/insights/youtube-algorithm/#how-the-youtube-algorithm-works
