Data Analytics: Practical Guide to Leveraging the Power of Algorithms, Data Science, Data Mining, Statistics, Big Data, and Predictive Analysis to Improve Business, Work, and Life

Chapter 18: Big Data and the Future
 
You may have noticed by now that companies not only advertise their
products or services online. Companies are also using the internet
marketplace to communicate directly with you, the consumer. Thinking
about what you use the internet for, you might realize it’s for more than
subconsciously being fed advertisements. You get online to research a
company and what they offer, find detailed information about a product or
service, and even find competitors and how their products and/or prices
compare. You will also find more entertainment than you can possibly
explore in a day and if you’re looking for videos or shows – it’s probably
much cheaper online than paying for a traditional provider. When it comes
to connecting people with people or people with companies, public or
private, many companies are using the web to reach a bigger audience in
less time and for less money.

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Online Activities and Big Data
With online accessibility being easier than ever, it also means the amount of
data being generated every day is growing exponentially – thrusting big
data to the forefront and making it hard to ignore.  Before anyone can even
consider analyzing all this data, though, efficient methods of simply
tracking the data need to be evaluated. There are massive amounts of data
generated from automated feedback such as weather trackers, traffic
monitors, and other transactions.
With all this data flying around there are several questions that must be
addressed. Which sources are reliable and which are not? What data is
relevant to a certain scenario and what can be disregarded? Sorting through
piles of data can be overwhelming, but big data has opened the field for a
new kind of business for people specializing in how to use big data to your
advantage. The potential power of big data is what these companies sort
through for you and advise on how to use it to your organization’s benefit.
This has also opened the door for specialized programs that help to manage
data. Apache™ Hadoop® is an advanced database management technology
that moves beyond just consolidating the information to increase your
profits and improve efficiency. The potential of this kind of database
management promises giant leaps for businesses – assuming they are open
to using the tools.
Instead of simply accumulating heaps of data, they will be able to actually
use the data before them. For a business involved in education, it may
drastically reduce the cost of education. For scientific purposes, such as
meteorology, the comprehension of natural phenomena will allow us to
have a better understanding of weather patterns. Businesses can increase
productivity by cutting out repetitive processes, and the job market will
create correlated datasets to help match job seekers more efficiently to jobs
and employers that suit them based on skills of the seeker and required
skills for the job.
Big data doesn’t only help education or business become more efficient or
more productive or increase profitability. As research continues to develop,
there is potential for understanding and reducing crime, web security

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improvements, as well as the ability to predict natural or economic disasters
with some accuracy well before they happen. As long as the research is
allowed to continue into how big data can be sorted and applied to the
variety of fields it impacts, the world is on the brink of witnessing radical
change – most of which will be for the better.

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The Value of Big Data
As the amount of data continues to grow there will be innovators who want
in on the party who will work to find ways to develop data management
tools that will convert big data into economic advantages. In 2012 the
market value of big data was worth $5 billion – in 2017 that’s estimated to
reach nearly $50 billion if we continue down the exponential growth path
we’ve seen so far.

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Security Risks Today
Based on information from 2012, of all the websites hacked during the year,
63% of website owners didn’t even know they had been hacked. Of those
hacked, 90% didn’t notice anything suspicious happening on their websites.
Half of the web owners learned about their sites being hacked from warning
messages in the search engines they were using or from the browser itself.

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Big Data and Impacts on Everyday Life