Tag Archives: Big Data

Aligning Big Data – Chinese

03 Tuesday Mar 2015

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Aligning Big Data – Chinese version is thanks to Optimus Prime – published on http://www.36dsj.com/archives/23692

译文：数据仓库DW 3.0，一个大数据通用的结构框架和模型

大数据36大数据专稿，原文作者：Martyn Jones  本文由1号店-欧显东编译向36大数据投稿，并授权36大数据独家发布。转载必须获得本站及作者的同意，拒绝任何不标明作者及来源的转载！

引言：

为了带来一些类似的简单性，连贯性和完整性的大数据的辩论，我分享一个普遍信息架构和管理的进化模型。

这是对大数据到一个更通用的体系结构框架的调整和布局，架构集成了数据仓库(DW 2.0)，商业智能和统计分析。

这个模型目前称为DW 3.0信息提供框架，简称DW 3.0。

回顾

在以前的一篇比较适用的博客名为“Data Made Simple – Even ‘Big Data‘ ”，里面主要有三个粗略类型的数据：企业运营数据；企业过程数据；以及企业信息数据。如下图：

大数据

图1-简要数据模型

简而言之数据的类型可以定义在以下几个：

企业运营数据：这是用于应用程序的数据，支持一个企业的日常运营。

企业过程数据：这是从企业系统是运行的测量和管理收集的数据。

企业信息数据：这主要是数据收集的来自内部和外部的数据源，通常最重要来源是企业运营数据。

这三个底层类型数据是DW 3.0基础。

主体

下面的图展示了DW 3.0总体框架:：

大数据

图2 -DW3.0信息框架

在这个图中有三个主要元素：数据来源，核心数据仓库和核心数据。

数据来源：这个元素涵盖所有当前的来源，可用的数据的品种和数量用来支持“挑战识别”，“选择定义”的过程和决策，包括统计分析方法和场景法

数据仓库：这是一个DW 2.0模型的演化路径。它扩展了数据仓库的范式不仅包括非结构化和复杂的数据，而且执行的信息和结果来源于统计分析之外的核心数据仓库的场景。

核心统计：这个元素涵盖了核心的统计能力，特别是但不限于对于进化的数据量，数据速度，数据质量和数据的多样性。

这模块的重点是核心统计。也将提及到三者的关系和合并的效果。

核心统计:

下图关注的核心元素模型：

大数据

图3 – DW3.0核心统计

上图说明了数据流和信息通过数据采集的过程然后到统计分析和结果的集成。

这个模型还引入了分析数据存储的概念。这可以说是最重要的建筑元素。

数据来源

为了简单起见图中有三个显式指定的数据源(当然依赖的企业数据仓库或数据集市也可以作为一个数据源)，但是，我在这篇文章中主要有以下三个数据源：复杂的数据；事件数据；基础数据。

复杂数据：这是结构化或高度复杂的结构化数据文件和其他复杂的数据中包含的文物，如多媒体文件。

事件数据：这是企业过程数据的一个方面，通常在一个细粒度的抽象层次。下面是业务流程日志，互联网web活动日志和其他类似事件数据的来源。这些来源所产生的量往往会高于其他数据源，和那些目前与大数据相关的大量的信息通过追踪即使是最轻微的行为数据覆盖生成一样。例如,有人随意浏览网站。

基础数据：这方面的数据包含可能描述为信号类型数据。通过复杂的事件关联和组件分析产生的连续高速流或者高度动荡的的数据。

革命从这里开始

在这里我将稍微突出建筑元素背后的一些指导原则。

没有业务就没有理由这样做：这是什么意思呢?这意味着每一个重大行动，甚至是高度投机活动，必须有一个有形的和可信的业务支持。就和“奥马哈圣人”，和“圣诞老人”的区别一样清楚。

架构决策都是基于一个完整的和深刻的理解需要实现什么和所有可用的选择：例如，拒绝使用高性能的数据库管理产品必须是有原因的，即使这原因是成本。不应该基于技术意见，如“我不喜欢供应商”如果对Hadoop有感觉，然后使用它，如果对Exasol或Oracle或Teradata有感觉，然后使用它们。那么你一定是一个技术不可知论者，但不是一个有教条的技术论者。

统计和非传统的数据源是完全集成到数据仓库未来架构前景:：建设更多的公司仓库，无论是通过行动或遗漏，将导致更大的效率低下，更大的误解和更大的风险。

架构必须连贯,连贯,可用和成本效益：如果没有,有什么意义,对吧？

没有技术,技艺或方法是短板：我们需要能够低成本纳入任何相关现有的新兴技术。

减少早期性和减少频繁性：大量的数据，特别是在高速运转的是存在问题的。减少它们的存储容量，即使我们不能在理论上减少的速度是绝对必要的。我将详细说明这一点区别。

减少早期性,减少频繁性

这里我扩大早期的主题数据减少过滤和聚合，我们可能会产生越来越多的大量的数据，但这并不意味着我们需要囤积所有它为了得到一些价值。

简单的来说这就是将初始数据进行ETL(提取和转换)尽可能靠近数据生成器。这是数据库适配器的概念，但它可以逆转的。

让我们看一个场景。

一个公司想要实施一些投机性分析每天的每一分钟收集的许多互联网网站活动日志数据成，他们运行大量的日志文件分布式平台减少数据映射。

然后他们可以分析结果数据。

面临的问题，与许多网站被黑客,设计师,而不是工程师、建筑师和数据库专家开发,是乱堆着极大的和笨拙的文物,如大量的日志文件的详细钝角和新鲜感添加数据。

我们需要确保这个挑战可以移除吗?

我们需要重新考虑网络日志，然后我们需要重新设计它。

我们需要能够进行语法分析日志数据，以减少产生的大量数据占用严重设计和详细数据。

我们需要的双重选择，能够不断地将数据发送给一个事件设备，可以用来降低数据量在一个事件会话的基础上。

如果我们必须使用日志文件，用许多小日志文件减少大量的日志文件和更多的日志周期减少几个日志周期。我们还必须最大化并行日志的好处。

所以现在，我们得到了日志数据的使用可以通过日志文件、日志文件由一个事件设备(如工具包的一部分分析数据收集适配器)或发送的设备通过消息传递信号点而来。

一旦数据已经传输(传统文件传输/共享或消息)我们可以进入下一个步骤：ET(A)L -提取、转换、分析和负载。

日志文件,我们通常采用ETL(A)但是当然我们不需要ETL中的E即提取，因为这是直接连接。

再次减少ET(AL)是另一种形式的机制，这就是为什么分析方面包括确保得到的数据通过需要的数据，而没有认可价值的垃圾和噪音，会尽早并且经常清理。

分析数据存储

分析数据存储(可以是一个分布式数据存储在某个云)支持统计分析的数据需求。这里的数据组织、结构、集成和丰富的持续波动，偶尔需要统计学家和科学家关注数据挖掘。分析数据存储中的数据可以累计或完全刷新。它可以有一个短寿命或有显著高寿命。

分析数据存储的核心是分析数据。不仅可以用于提供数据统计分析过程，但它也可以用来提供长期持久存储分析结果和场景，和未来的一些分析，因此具有“回馈”的能力。

分析数据存储中的数据和信息也可以使用、来源于数据仓库中存储的数据，它也可能受益于拥有自己的专用数据集市专门为这个目的而设计的。

在分析数据存储的统计分析的结果也可能导致反馈用于调优数据，过滤和浓缩的规则,无论是智能数据分析、复杂事件和歧视适配器或ET(AL)工作。

总结

这一定是非常短暂的对于目前的DW 3.0的标签

模型不寻求定义统计或统计分析是如何应用的，已经做了足够多，但如何适应统计在一个扩展的DW 2.0架构，和几乎不需要想出反动和不合身的问题解决方案，可以解决的更好、更有效的方法通过明智、健全的工程原则和适当的明智的应用方法，技术和技巧。

原文：Aligning Big Data

Contradictions of Big Data

01 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in Ask Martyn, Big Data, Consider this

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What we’ve been told

We’ve been told that Big Data is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and that its major characteristics are massive volumes (so great are they that mainstream relational products and technologies such as Oracle, DB2 and Teradata just can’t hack it), high variety (not only structured data, but also the whole range of digital data), and high velocity (the speed at which data is generated and transmitted). Also, from time to time, much to the chagrin of some Big Data disciples, a whole slew of new identifying Vs are produced, touted and then dismissed (check out my LinkedIn Pulse article on Big Data and the Vs).

So, beware. Things in Big Data may not be as they may seem.

It’s not about big

I have been waging an uphill battle against the nonsensical and unsubstantiated idea that more data is better data, but now this view is getting some additional support, and from some surprising corners.

In a recent blog piece on IBM’s Big Data and Analytics Hub (Big data: Think Smarter, not bigger), Bernard Marr wrote that “the truth is, it isn’t how big your data is, it’s what you do with it that matters!”

Elsewhere, SAS echoed similar sentiments on their web site: “The real issue is not that you are acquiring large amounts of data. It’s what you do with the data that counts.”

Can we call that ‘strike one’ for Big Data Vs?

It’s not about variety

It is claimed that 20% of digital data is structured, it is based on the problematic suggestion that structured data is uniquely relational. It is also claimed that unstructured data includes CSV files and XML data, and this makes up far more than the 20% of the data generated. But this definition is simply wrong.

If anything, CSV data is structured, and XML data is highly structured, and it’s typically regular ASCII data. So it does not add variety, even though it is not structured in the ways that some people might expect, especially if that someone lacks the required knowledge and experience. Simply stated, CSV data is structured, it’s just that it lacks rich metadata, but that doesn’t make it unstructured.

“But”, I hear you say “what about all the non-textual data such as multi-media, and what about the masses of unstructured textual data?”

Take it from me, most businesses will not be basing their business strategies on the analysis of a glut of selfies, home videos of cute kittens, or the complete works of William Shakespeare or Dan Brown. Almost all business analysis will continue to be carried out on structured data obtained primarily from internal operational systems and external structured data providers.

Strike two! Third time lucky?

It’s not even about velocity

So, if we accept that Big Data isn’t really about the data volumes or data variety that leaves us with velocity, right? Well no, because if it isn’t about record breaking VLDBor significant data variety, then for most commercial businesses the management of data velocity becomes either less of an issue or just is no issue. The fact that some software vendors and IT service suppliers set up this ‘straw man’ argument and then knock it down with the ‘amazing powers’ of their products and services, is quite another matter.

Strike three, and counting.

It’s not about the manageability of Big Data

We have been told and time again that the major difference between a data scientist and professional statistician is that the ‘scientists’ know how to cope very well with massive volumes, varieties and velocities of data. Now it turns out that this is also questionable.

According to Bob Violino writing in Information Management (Messy Big Data Overwhelms Data Scientists – 20 February 2015) “Data scientists see messy, disorganized data as a major hurdle preventing them from doing what they find most interesting in their jobs”. So, when it comes to data quality and structure the ‘scientists’ don’t really have an advantage over professional statisticians.

Last year Thomas C. Redman writing in the Harvard Business Review (Data’s Credibility Problem) noted that when Big Data is unreliable “managers quickly lose faith” and “and fall back on their intuition to make decisions, steer their companies, and implement strategy” and when this happens there is a propensity to reject potentially “important, counterintuitive implications that emerge from big data analyses.”

Strike four?

The new analytics aren’t new

Data science and Big Data analytics are the new kids on the block, aren’t they?

Well, here are some real life scenarios.

A major banking equipment supplier: A lot of banking equipment is hybrid analogic-digital, a simple example of this would be a photo copier or a physical document processing device. One major supplier decided to incorporate the capture of sensor data produced by their devices to predict failure and problems. Predictive preventive maintenance rules are created and corroborated using the data generated by sensors on each customer device, and these rules then get incorporated into the devices logic.

A major IT vendor: What happens when you create an intersection and convergence between technologies, techniques and method from areas of mainstream IT, data architecture and management, statistics (quantitative and qualitative analytics) and data visualisation, artificial intelligence/machine learning and knowledge management? This is precisely what one of the main European IT vendors did, and the idea proved to be quite attractive to customers, prospects and investors.

A major integrated circuit supplier: The testing of ICs at the ‘fabs’ (manufacturing plants) generates serious amount of data. This data is used to detect errors in the IC manufacturing process, it is captured and analysed in as near real-time as possible, which is necessary due to the costly nature of over-running the production of faulty ICs. To get around this problem the company uses a combination of fast data capture, transformation and loading of data into a data analytics area to ensure early and precise problem detection.

All Big Data Analytics success stories?

The first happened in 1989, the second in 1993 and the third in 2001. Yes, Big Data and Big Data analytics are sort of newish.

Strike five.

The science is frequently not very scientific

What is science?

According to Vasant Dhar of the Stern School of Business (Data Science and Prediction), Jeff Leek (The key word in “Data Science” is not Data, it is Science), and repeated on Wikipedia, “In general terms, data science is the extraction of knowledge from data”. Well, excuse me if I beg to differ. I have seen data scientists at work, and the word science doesn’t actually jump out and grab you. It’s difficult to make the connection, just as it is to accurately connect some popular science magazines with fundamental scientific research.

If a professional and qualified statistician wants to label themselves a data scientist then I have no issue with that, it’s their problem, but I am not willing to lend credibility to the term ‘data scientist’ when it is merely an interesting job title, with at most a tenuous connection to the actual role, and one that is liberally applied, with the almost customary largesse of IT, to creative code hackers and business-averse dabblers in data.

As Hazelcast VP Miko Matsumura suggested in Data Science is Dead “… put “Data Scientist” on your resume. It may get you additional calls from recruiters, and maybe even a spiffy new job, where you’ll be the King or Queen of a rotting whale-carcass of data” and ” Don’t be the data scientist tasked with the crime-scene cleanup of most companies’ “Big Data”—be the developer, programmer, or entrepreneur who can think, code, and create the future.”

Strike six.

And the value is questionable

DATA: “Data is a super-class of a modern representation of an arcane symbology.” – Anon

If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone claim that data has intrinsic positive value then I would be as wealthy as Warren Buffet.

If I have said it once, I have said it a hundred time. In order for data to be more than an operational necessity it requires context.

Providing valid data with valid context turns that data into information.

Data can be relevant and data can be irrelevant. That relevance or irrelevance of data may be permanent or temporary, continuous or episodic, qualitative or quantitative.

Some data is meaningless, and there are cases whereby nobody can remember why it was collected or what purpose it serves.

Taking all this into account we can ask the deadly pragmatic question: what value does this data have? Which is sometimes answered with a pertinent ‘no value whatsoever’.

Strike seven.

So what is it really about?

It is said that Big Data is changing the world, but for all intents and purposes, and shamed by previous Big Data excesses, some people are rapidly changing the definitions and parameters of Big Data, and to position it as being more tangible and down-to-earth, whilst moving it away from its position as an overhyped and dead-ended liability.

Big Data is a dopey term, applied necessarily ambiguously to a surfeit of tenuously connected vagaries, and its time has come and gone. So, let’s drop the Big Data moniker, and embrace the fact that data is data, and long live ‘All Data’, yes, all digital data. Let’s consider all data and for what it’s worth to the business, and not for what some chatterers reckon its value is – having as they do, little or no insight into the businesses to which they refer, or of the data in that these businesses possess.

So, when push comes to shove, is Big Data really about high volumes, high velocity and high variety, or is it in fact about much noise, too much pomposity and abundant similarity leading to unnecessary high anxiety?

Thanks very much for reading.

Big Data in Question – Again

01 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in All Data, Big Data, Consider this

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Big Data is now an inhospitable and unhealthy land inhabited by those who, through accident or design, deceive naïve and sentimental bystanders and those who are willingly mislead.

When all of this Big Data malarkey started it was sort of funny, humorous and occasional witty, especially in the affected, bizarre and the frequently uninhibited ways that freshly-minted self-appointed gurus and experts would “big it up”

Doctor Freud would have had a field day with all of that, being as it was, and for that matter still is, a postmodern mishmash of Riefenstahl, Freddy Mercury and Monty Python on steroids. However, after that extended, operatic and high-camp hiatus it all went downhill.

The Big Data scene is fast becoming an outrageous and brash festival of deception, disinformation and obliviousness. Which is a pity, because it does the industry no good whatsoever.

It is telling that Big Data evangelists, gurus and assorted sycophants cannot even define Big Data adequately, never mind discuss (or for that matter, point at) tangible success stories, without falling into contradictions on all of the key defining characteristics of volume, variety and velocity, and resorting to crude debating devices to avoid or finesse the concerns and the questions.

Almost every morning I check out the industry news, and almost invariably, it comes with new mind-boggling examples of Big Data nonsense.

However, it isn’t always nonsense for nonsense’s sake, there are agendas, there are rational explanations why Big Data has become at the same time, one of the most hyped up fads in the history of IT, and one that its supporters find so difficult to actually explain and justify, in any reasonable sort of way.

Therefore, when it comes to Big Data, beyond the surfeit of platitudes, clichés, bluff and bluster, the only thing in play are the interests of industry, the patrons, the courtesans and their entourage of the innocent and the beguiled.

One of the biggest deceptions in Big Data is in the misleadingly named ‘success stories’. The thing is that most of these success stories that I have ever read have been:

  • So vague that it’s difficult to know how success is being defined never mind reached.
  • So secretive and obtuse is the avoidance of naming names, locations and other relevant Big Data references that it’s impossible to corroborate if these claims are actually true or not. Disclaimer: I have worked for some of the biggest IT vendors, and in senior roles, and I know what is behind comments such as “the Big Data project is a success, although the client name and project are confidential” and “it’s delivering such major competitive advantages that we are obliged to keep it under wraps”.
  • Stories stolen from elsewhere, such as from Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence, VLDB or Business Application projects.
  • Borderline fantasies and badly contrived technology fan fiction.

However, it doesn’t stop there.

One of the clearest examples of the questionable nature of Big Data evangelism is when it is used to piggyback Big Data hype on simple, tangible and immediately recognisable artefacts or applications that have little in common with Big Data.

This is an extreme illustration, but it works like this: “iPhones are commercially successful, iPhones are part of Big Data, and therefore Big Data is commercially successful.”

As if the mere conjuring up of association, affinity and proximity will convince people of the great and growing value of Big Data.

What I am also referring to are publicity pieces that may as well have been titled:

  • Smith, Galbraith, Mies, Keynes, Homer SImpson and the economic justification of Big Data
  • Lovelace, Babbage, von Neumann, Eckert, Davies, Codd, Knuth, Naur and the technological underpinnings of Big Data
  • Einstein, Freud, Edison, Faraday, Recorde and the intellectual structure of Big Data
  • Socrates, Kant, Hegel, Marx , Adorno and the philosophical correctness of Big Data
  • Great quotes about Big Data, from the Cambrian era to the postmodern époque
  • Great jokes about Big Data, from Mel Brooks to Steve Martin
  • Sportspeople and Big Data, from Lottie Dodd and Babe Ruth to Rafa Nadal and CR7
  • Industry support of Big Data, from Henry Ford to Neutron Jack

Do you recognise similarities?

It’s no big deal, just the use of unreliable, misleading and inappropriate fallacies, dressed up as cute, plausible and accessible collateral. People may think that such things are clever and witty, but they aren’t, it’s just misleading.

Let’s continue with something simple.

Evasion is, in ethics, an act that deceives by stating a true statement that is immaterial or leads to a false deduction. For example, citing events, persons or anecdotes from the history of IT to justify the supposed or imaginary value of Big Data. This is close to the notion of a non sequitur, which of course is an argument, the conclusions from which do not follow from its premise. It falls short of being full-on sophistry, purely because the simplistic, puerile and superficial arguments put forward in favour of Big Data do not match those of the true sophist who seeks to reason with clever but fallacious and deceptive arguments. Too many of the Big Data arguments are fallacious and deceptive, but no one, equipped with a reasonable capacity for critical thinking, should take such ‘arguments’ as valid.

Hold this thought: Big Data hype is a viper’s nest of logical fallacies, white lies and disinformation.

Just when I think things could not get any weirder, they do, and Big Data ceiling of hyperbole rises even higher, up to the rarer atmosphere of extreme tendentiousness.

There is a growing mass of Big Data hoop-la, hyperbole and flim flam that exceeds all previously bounds of overstatement, solecism and confabulation. This is where the real volumes, varieties and velocities are in Big Data; in hokie.

We live, as Oscar Wilde said in his day, in and age of surfaces. Yes, superficiality, puerility and short-termism are the competing orders of the day. However, I am still amazed – and maybe wrongly so – by what ostensibly professional, experienced and knowledgeable people are willing, able and prepared to accept, especially when it comes to Big Data flim flam sauce.

Here are some examples of the nonsense about Big Data that is taken as gospel by ‘adults’:

Data Warehousing is part of Big Data: No comment.

Big Data will replace Enterprise Data Warehousing: People can’t even explain the features and benefits of Big Data. I try it make it as easy as possible, ‘if you can’t say it, point to it’. But, seriously, people can’t even relate tangible and credible Big Data success stories, never mind show how it will replace Enterprise Data Warehousing, whether that’s the Inmon or Kimball flavour, take your pick.

Everyone and every organisation can benefit from Big Data: If people can’t explain this, and they don’t in terms of tangible benefits, then the claim should remain questionable.

Data Scientists will replace Statisticians: Why is that so? It is claimed that Data Scientists are uniquely equipped to handle massive volumes, varieties and velocities of data – well, as it turns out, this isn’t certain either.

Big Data is in its infancy: I think we may be confusing infancy with lack of real traction, and of time and place utility.

You cannot be serious: Just what are people talking about here? I have read vague, naïve and ill-informed pieces about data management, data architecture, data warehousing, reporting, business intelligence and a plethora of etcetera that have been passed off as observations and commentary on Big Data. So, what makes people recycle hackneyed, misleading and badly conceptualised ‘content’?

In the commentary on one of Bernard Marr’s pieces on LinkedIn (a professional networking site) I observed that no one can adequately explain what Big Data is without falling into contradictions and fancies, and no one seems to be capable or willing to provide tangible success stories.

Bernard responded to this comment by pointing out “the reason for that is that Big Data means different things to different people.”

Fair enough. It’s an explanation.

That said, I have always had more than a tenuous dislike of postmodern thinking, in fact most things ‘postmodern’. Call me old fashioned, jaded or cynical, but to me, the idea that everything can mean anything is an aberration that I prefer to leave to others.

I am at a loss to explain why so many reasonable people are willing to embrace the hype surrounding Big Data and Big Data Analytics, including the attendant surfeit of nonsense, incongruences and contradictions, and from my perspective, it defies reason and good sense.

Therefore, I will just end again with a fabulous quote from Ben Goldacre:

“You cannot reason people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into”.

Many thanks for reading.

Contradictions of Big Data – Short

01 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in Big Data, Consider this, Good Strat, Good Strategy, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones

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Please note: This is an edited version of a previous piece with a similar name, but focusing solely on the three main Vs of Big Data.

What we’ve been told

We’ve been told that business Big Data is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and that its major characteristics are:

  • massive volumes – so great are they that mainstream relational products and technologies such as Oracle, DB2 and Teradata just can’t hack it, and
  • high variety – not only structured data, but also the whole range of digital data, and
  • high velocity – the speed at which data is generated, transmitted and received

Which is a simple and straightforward means of classification. Big Data is about massive volumes, high variety and high velocity. Right?

It’s not about big

I have never bought into the idea that more data is necessarily better data, or that it provides better focus or leads to increased insight, in fact I have been quite vocal with my contrarian opinion, but now this view is getting some additional support, and from some surprising corners.

In a recent blog piece on IBM’s Big Data and Analytics Hub (Big data: Think Smarter, not bigger), Bernard Marr wrote that “the truth is, it isn’t how big your data is, it’s what you do with it that matters!”

Over at Fierce Big Data it was Pam Baker who stated that “the term big data is unfortunate because it’s really not about the size of the data”. (Big data is not about petabytes, but complex computing).

Elsewhere, SAS echoed similar sentiments on their web site: “The real issue is not that you are acquiring large amounts of data. It’s what you do with the data that counts.”

Well, apparently Big Data isn’t about “massive volumes” of data.

Strike 1!

It’s not about variety

It is claimed that 20% of digital data is structured, it is based on the problematic suggestion that structured data is uniquely relational.

It is also said that unstructured data includes CSV files and XML data, and this makes up far more than the 20% of the data generated. But this definition is wrong.

If anything, CSV data is structured, and XML data is highly structured, and it’s typically regular ASCII data. So there it does not add variety, even though it is not structured in the ways that some someone might expect, especially if that someone lacks the required knowledge and experience. Simply stated, CSV data is structured, it’s just that it lacks rich metadata, but that doesn’t make it unstructured.

“But”, I hear you say “what about all the non-textual data such as multi-media, and what about the masses of unstructured textual data?”

Take it from me, most businesses will not be basing their business strategies on the analysis of a glut of selfies, juvenile twittering, home videos of cute kittens, or the complete works of William Shakespeare. Almost all business analysis (whether done by a professional statistician or a data scientist) will continue to be carried out using structured data obtained primarily from internal operational systems and external structured data providers.

Variety, Sir? No problem.

Strike two!

It’s not even about velocity

So, if we accept that Big Data isn’t really about the massive data volumes or high data variety then that leaves us with velocity. Because if it isn’t about record breaking VLDB or significant data variety, then for most commercial businesses the management of data velocity becomes either less of an issue or just is no issue.

Even in some extreme circumstances, one can explore the suggestion that data sampling can remove issues with data volume as well as velocity.

However, the fact that some software vendors and IT service suppliers set up this‘straw man’ velocity argument and then knock it down with the ‘amazing powers’ of their products and services, is quite another matter.

So, is it really about velocity?

Strike three!

So what is it really about?

Big Data is a dopey term, applied necessarily ambiguously to a surfeit of tenuously connected vagaries, and its time has come and gone. Let’s dump the Big Data moniker, and the 3 Vs along with it, and embrace the fact that data is data, there will always be more of it.

So, let’s consider ‘all data’ and principally for its time and place utility.

If there is something that you are not sure about or have questions with then please leave a comment below or email me.

Thanks very much for reading.

Consider this: Big Data and the Pot of Tea

17 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Big Data, Consider this, Good Strat, Good Strategy, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones, Strategy

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To begin at the beginning

Hold this thought: Big Data is King.

Is there just nothing that Big Data isn’t capable of fixing? From terrorism, world hunger, Ebola, HIV, fraud, money laundering and hiring the ‘right’ people through to winning the lottery, curing hangovers, arranging entrapment and finding the love of your life. Big Data is King. Continue reading →

A brief introduction to Knowledge Management

14 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by in Analytics, Big Data, Consider this, Good Strat, Good Strategy, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones, statistics

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A helpful slideset that is used to explain the purposes, positions and roles of Knowledge Management.

Enjoy! Please tell me what you think about this slide deck. Many thanks for viewing. 

Big Data, a promised land where the Big Bucks grow

12 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by in Big Data, Consider this, Good Strat, Information Management, Martyn Jones

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Consider this. Many people come up to me in the street, and, apropos of nothing, they ask me how they can make money from Big Data.

Normally I would send such people to see a specialist – no, not a guru, but a sort of health specialist, but because this has happened to me so many times now, I eventually decided to put pen to paper, push the envelope, open up the kimono, and to record my advice for posterity and the great grandchildren.

So, here are my top seven tips for cashing in quick on the new big thing on the block.

1 – A business opportunity for faith

Like every new religion, trend or fad, Big Data has its own founding myths, theology and liturgy, and there is money to be made in it; loadsa lovely jubbly money. By predicating and evangelising Big Data you will be welcomed with open arms into the Big Data faith, and will receive all the attendant benefits that will miraculously and mysteriously fall upon you and your devout friends. Go on, I dare you. Be a Big Data guru, a shepherd to a flock of sheep, and enjoy the wealth, health and happiness that most surely will come your way. You too can look cool in red Prada slippers, a flattering and flowing gown and matching accessories.

2 – Acquire it, multiply it, weigh it, mark it up and sell it on

Simply stated, this is about acquiring other people’s data, by sacred means or profane, marking it up and then selling it on. The value you add is that you act as a trusted conduit, a conduit for good. You may care to enrich the data, swop the order of data, replicate and embellish data, make stuff up, etc. which all serves to ‘add value’ to the data. You may even consider adding nuggets of value to the data, just for kicks and giggles. My best friend’s favourite is injecting the good old ‘diaper and beer’ and ‘friends and family’ clichés into every Big Data collection, as it never fails to thrill, please and delight.

3 – Anything can be anything

The good thing about making money from Big Data is that it doesn’t need to be anything to do with Big Data. Make a 20GB Enterprise Data Warehouse? Call it a Big Data success. Sell 20 boxes of dodgy doughnuts down the alternative market? Proclaim a Big Data triumph. Sell your digital porn stash to your best mate? Point to the incredible invisible hand of the Big Data market at work. See what I’m doing there. Anything can be anything, and you too can cash in on that opportunity, big time.

4 – Big Data Patronage

Tense, nervous headaches? Do you like making up stories about Big Data, or for that matter anything else? Are you a natural born fibber but are strapped for cash? Then worry no longer. If you get a Big Data patron you will be sorted for ‘life’; get two and you’ll be sorted for the afterlife as well. With a Big Data patron you can get the most tenuous, crappiest and superficial of pieces published, promoted and vaunted – globally. Can’t make it up yourself, then outsource and offshore it, after all, just get the keywords right for SEO ranking and the gullible will flock to you in droves. The down side of this profession is that you will be targeted for writing half-truths, quarter-truths and downright lies, and you will be pilloried as a purveyor of rank hyperbole. But don’t worry, take heart and never lose the faith, you will be in good company. As one Big Data guru was want to say ” If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.” Amen! brother.

5 – Big Data Certification

By 2016 there will be global demand for 30 billion Big Data professionals. Are you prepared to cash in on that inevitability? No? Then consider this.

One of my best friends makes his living as a completely phony Big Data Scientist. For two hundred bucks he can make you a Data Scientist or a Big Data guru. Some guys give you an education but this guy gives you immediate access to high paying jobs, sex and a life in the city. Moreover, for an extra 250 bucks you can also become a certified Big Data Trainer, which will allow you to do unto others what has been done unto you.

6 – Creative Technology Reuse

Big Data has heralded in the biggest innovations known in the history of computing, and arguably in the entire history of humankind. One of those new inventions has been the now widely acclaimed and revolutionary ‘flat file data base’ (FFDB), and this has been accompanied with developments in low level operating system primitives that allow for the processing of these collections and hierarchies of FFDBs. So, if one has a mind to do so, one can get some real business leverage off of these new tendencies by borrowing 21st century technology found in old operating system hacks from the sixties and seventies and eighties and nineties and… Well, the point is that in order to get serious funding it is no longer good enough to have a half page business plan, it is also necessary to eke out ‘stuff’ that works within the new paradigms of Big Data and Big Data Analytics. For my next venture I will be looking for serious funding for my ‘Arbitrary Dawdle Down Data Street’ (AD3S) Big Data Analytics platform, a platform designed to support virtual 1k bit processing and the massively parallel provision of global regular expression search and match (S&M), concatenation and listing, and cooperative data-driven and streamed data extraction and reporting. I’m hoping to attract the attention of governments, the EU, the Manic Street Preachers, the UN, China, Vladimir Putin, the DOD, HP, Oracle, Gartner, Lana Del Rey, Deloitte and IBM. So, this is going to be absolutely massive. Word!

7 – Big Data Brokerage

According to leading management consultants and industry watchers Gartner, McKinsey and Deloitte, data needs to be managed and accounted like any other asset, such as money. To get into a similar view-point requires a massive leap of faith, but it is a conversion that might drive dividends. One avenue to be explored in eking out value from the apparently massively valuable Big Data lakes, silos and pools is through the operation of a Big Data Brokerage. A Big Data Brokerage is a business whose main responsibility is to be an intermediary that puts Big Data buyers and Big Data sellers together in order to facilitate a transaction. Big Data Brokerage companies are compensated via commission after the Big Data transaction has been successfully completed. They may also charge introductory fees. Just imagine the wealth of business opportunities in that. You could become the Goldman Sachs of data.

That’s it folks!

I hope you enjoyed this piece and would be pleased to hear your views on this and other subjects.

Whilst I understand the attraction and even the need of creating a new and significant growth industry, I would also advise a degree of restraint, and whilst I see that “Big Data” (the consideration of the potential value of All Data) has its allure, I also think that some good sense and informed caution should also prevail.

Thank you so much for reading.

Martyn Richard Jones

How to position Big Data

12 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by in Big Data, Consider this, Good Strat, Martyn Jones

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To begin at the beginning

Fueled by the new fashions on the block, principally Big Data, the Internet of Things, and to a lesser extent Cloud computing, there’s a debate quietly taking please over what statistics is and is not, and where it fits in the whole new brave world of data architecture and management. For this piece I would like to put aspects of this discussion into context, by asking what ‘Core Statistics’ means in the context of the DW 3.0 Information Supply Framework.

Core Statistics on the DW 3.0 Landscape

The following diagram illustrates the overall DW 3.0 framework:

There are three main concepts in this diagram: Data Sources; Core Data Warehousing; and, Core Statistics.

Data Sources: All current sources, varieties, velocities and volumes of data available.

Core Data Warehousing: All required content, including data, information and outcomes derived from statistical analysis.

Core Statistics: This is the body of statistical competence, and the data used by that competence. A key data component of Core Statistics is the Analytics Data Store, which is designed to support the requirements of statisticians.

The focus of this piece is on Core Statistics. It briefly looks at the aspect of demand driven data provisioning for statistical analysis and what ‘statistics’ means in the context of the DW 3.0 framework.

Demand Driven Data Provisioning

The DW 3.0 Information Supply Framework isn’t primarily about statistics it’s about data supply. However, the provision of adequate, appropriate and timely demand-driven data to statisticians for statistical analysis is very much an integral part of the DW 3.0 philosophy, framework and architecture.

Within DW 3.0 there are a number of key activities and artifacts that support the effective functioning of all associated processes. Here are some examples:

All Data Investigation: An activity centre that carries out research into potential new sources of data and analyses the effectiveness of existing sources of data and its usage. It is also responsible for identifying markets for data owned by the organization.

All Data Brokerage: An activity that focuses on all aspects of matching data demand to data supply, including negotiating supply, service levels and quality agreements with data suppliers and data users. It also deals with contractual and technical arrangements to supply data to corporate subsidiaries and external data customers.

All Data Quality: Much of the requirements for clean and useable data, regardless of data volumes, variety and velocity, have been addressed by methods, tools and techniques developed over the last four decades. Data migration, data conversion, data integration, and data warehousing have all brought about advances in the field of data quality. The All Data Quality function focuses on providing quality in all aspects of information supply, including data quality, data suitability, quality and appropriateness of data structures, and data use.

All Data Catalogue: The creation and maintenance of a catalogue of internal and external sources of data, its provenance, quality, format, etc. It is compiled based on explicit demand and implicit anticipation of demand, and is the result of an active scanning of the ‘data markets’, ‘potential new sources’ of data and existing and emerging data suppliers.

All Data Inventory: This is a subset of the All Data Catalogue. It identifies, describes and quantifies the data in terms of a full range of metadata elements, including provenance, quality, and transformation rules. It encompasses business, management and technical metadata; usage data; and, qualitative and quantitative contribution data.

Of course there are many more activities and artifacts involved in the overall DW 3.0 framework.

Yes, but is it all statistics?

Statistics, it is said, is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation and presentation of data. It deals with all aspects of data, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments; learning from data, and of measuring, controlling, and communicating uncertainty; and it provides the navigation essential for controlling the course of scientific and societal advances[i]. It is also about applying statistical thinking and methods to a wide variety of scientific, social, and business endeavors in such areas as astronomy, biology, education, economics, engineering, genetics, marketing, medicine, psychology, public health, sports, among many.

Core Statistics supports micro and macro oriented statistical data, and metadata for syntactical projection (representation-orientation); semantic projection (content-orientation); and, pragmatic projection (purpose-orientation).

The Core Statistics approach provides a full range of data artifacts, logistics and controls to meet an ever growing and varied demand for data to support the statistician, including the areas of data mining and predictive analytics. Moreover, and this is going to be tough for some people to accept, the focus of Core Statistics is on professional statistical analysis of all relevant data of all varieties, volumes and velocities, and not, for example, on the fanciful and unsubstantiated data requirements of amateur ‘analysts’ and ‘scientists’ dedicated to finding causation free correlations and interesting shapes in clouds.

That’s all folks

This has been a brief look at the role of DW 3.0 in supplying data to statisticians.

One key aspect of the Core Statistics element of the DW 3.0 framework is that it renders irrelevant the hyperbolic claims that statisticians are not equipped to deal with data variety, volumes and velocity.

Even with the advent of Big Data alchemy is still alchemy, and data analysis is still about statistics.

If you have any questions about this aspect of the framework then please feel free to contact me, or to leave a comment below.

Many thanks for reading.

Catalogue under: big data, predictive analytics

[i] Davidian, M. and Louis, T. A., 10.1126/science.1218685

Big Data Will Save the World

12 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by in Big Data, Good Strat, Good Strategy, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones

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Good morning fellow consumers; here’s a pop quiz question: What does Big Data have in common with Robitussin? Think about, take your time.

Okay, times up!

Robitussin is a legal pharmaceutical product commonly associated with coughs, colds and flu combinations. Continue reading →