Last Friday, I had the chance to attend a panel of career technologists and data scientists who all work in the fascinating field known as “big data”. “Big data” is an umbrella term to describe data whose qualities are so atypical that classical data analysis techniques fail to even begin to tackle understanding them. The data can be in any conceivable format and in any field of study. For instance, in news analysis, “How are news articles relevantly accessed when more arrive in a single day than a person can read in a lifetime?” Or for internet security, “Can login attempt information from internet users across the world predict when a potential login request is coming from a spam-bot?” Perhaps most interestingly, “Can anonymous medical patient data be leveraged to provide advanced diagnostic capabilities?” (These are all real examples of active research being conducted by members of the the panel I attended.)
...