Business analytics uses quantitative processes to help businesses make optimal decisions and discover business insights from data. It includes statistics, prediction, and optimization. Big data refers to extremely large data sets that are too large to be processed with traditional data processing applications. The combination of business analytics and big data allows businesses to gain insights from large, diverse data sets to improve processes, make predictions, optimize performance, and support decision making through techniques like predictive modeling, forecasting, and response analysis. Examples include a bank using a Hadoop cluster to build a more accurate risk score to better manage customer portfolios.