In a world so immense and full of possibilities and what if’s, how can someone who needs to make a choice know that they are making the right one? With new technology and apps at your fingertips that tell you everything you need to know about yourself and your business, how can you trust those apps telling you the correct information? The answer is simple; you can’t. But, it is important to remember that this technology, the apps, and the internet are constantly collecting information about you and your business and compiling it into numbers and figures called data, and this data provides businesses and individuals with information.
Difference between big data and small data
There are two different kinds of data, big data and small data, and the main differences between the two are the variety, volume, and velocity of the data. Big data is the large picture that encompasses many different types of data and is mainly unstructured. Small data is the small picture. It is structured, focused, and easily interpreted. Both big data and small data are valuable and can affect the bottom line of an organization.
Data analytics solutions
Data Analytics, the analysis, and interpretation of data, is a valuable resource used by many industries. Banks and credit card companies collect information about withdrawals and spending habits to prevent fraud. Data is used in politics to determine who is winning an election. And according to The Big Data Guru, one of the most used e-commerce websites, Amazon, uses big data analytics to collect information from customer transactions to create their personalized recommendation system. In order to make a well-informed decision, personally or for a business, there has to be an effective analysis of data. To effectively analyze data, the data collected needs to be sufficient, important, and valuable.
Data is everywhere, but according to an article on Forbes, only about 18% of small and about 57% of medium businesses utilize data analytics solutions. How we collect and interpret, data will give us the information we seek, and data analytics is how we do that. Daniel Keys Moran said, “You can have data without information, but you cannot have information without data.” The information required to make a decision lies in the data we collect.