Paper from my Data Analytics course.

1. Big Data Explained
By: Craig Bach
In my write up I will describe what big data is, why it is important, as well as how it
relates to the topics covered in MIS2502. To begin, I believe that there are many different
definitions for big data. However, the definition that I believe to be the most accurate is one that
I describe in my own words as “A high velocity, high volume, and high variety set of data that
contains many insights that have not yet been discovered, due to the challenge of working with
such uniquely and extensively different datapoints”. It is estimated that nearly 85% of a
company’s data is unstructured. This means it can be in the form of emails, text documents,
photographs, intranets and extranets, social media pages, video and audio files, etc. This is an
enormous amount of data that we have barely scratched the surface with. If companies could
efficiently capture, store, transform, analyze, and then take insights from what the data says, they
could make their business much more competitive within their industry. The long-term benefits
of using big data include increasing profitability of the firm, potentially cutting costs, finding
new ways to produce products and distribute services, achieve better customer satisfaction, and
better suit the customer’s needs. This topic of big data directly relates to what we have covered
in MIS2502. In class, we have been learning techniques to discover insights from large sets of
data. We have done this by using MYSQL to query databases, as well as using RStudio to
statistically analyze different sets of data. For the same reasons that we’ve wanted to find
insights from data in class, we also want to find insights from data in companies. I believe that
Netflix is the best real-life example of how big data is utilized. Netflix analyzes the trends in
what their users are watching to suggest new movies and tv shows depending on the users age,

2. time of day, month of the year, etc. They also use big data to decide which new content to add,
and which content to remove to maximize their subscriber count and profitability (General
Networks). It is truly amazing what they have accomplished as a company and how well they’ve
utilized big data. In closing, big data is everywhere, and it is up to us to find the insights to make
a difference.
Citations:
“What Is Big Data? And Why Is It Important to Me?” General Networks, 22 Oct. 2016,
gennet.com/big-data/big-data-important/.
“Big Data.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 3 Apr. 2019, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_data.