How Big Data Can Improve Your Running
Big data is affecting running like it affects all aspects of life. This article will investigate how big data affects running and how you can use big data (and small data) to improve your running.
What is Big Data?
The term “big data” refers to the collection and analysis of data that occurs on a large scale. Wikipedia defines big data as: “data sets with sizes beyond the ability of commonly used software tools to capture, curate, manage, and process data within a tolerable elapsed time.”
Big data comes in structured, semi-structured, and unstructured formats. The ability of computers to analyze unstructured data is one of the biggest reasons for growth in big data since so much of everyday life is unstructured.
If you don’t quite understand what unstructured data is, here’s a counterexample using structured data with a recipe as an example. Most recipes are broken down into the following parts (the structure): recipe name; list of ingredients; instructions for cooking. This order is called the data model for a recipe.
Unstructured data, on the other hand, does not have a data model describing it. The entries in my running journal can be considered unstructured data if I just write down what my day consists of without using the same structure for every entry…
