02 Sunday Jul 2017
Posted in 4th generation Data Warehousing, All Data, Big Data, Big Data Analytics, dark data, data architecture, Data governance, Data Lake, data management, Data Mart, data science, Data Supply Framework, Data Warehouse, Data Warehousing, pig data, The Amazing Big Data Challenge, The Big Data Contrarians
Afilonius Rex
Dunny on the Wold, 1st July 2017
The 4th big data bullshit is here, and it is completely reimagining the way we conceptualise, think and reason. This amazingly and imaginary Govesque world is driven by hyperbole and mendacity distributed via interconnected digital devices that are capable of amassing and fermenting ever-growing amounts of big data bullshit.
16 Sunday Aug 2015
Posted in Big Data, Consider this, good start, goodstart, Strategy
Tags
Big Data, cynicism, data management, fakes, good start, goodstart, gurus, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones, Strategy
Why so many ‘fake’ Big Data Gurus?
Where do you all come from?
Where do you all come from?
All your integrity’s gone
Now tell me, where do you all come from?
From ‘Where Do You All Come From‘ by Mott the Hoople Continue reading
01 Friday May 2015
Posted in Big Data, Consider this, good start, goodstart
Tags
Big Data, Consider this, data architecture, data management, good start, goodstart, Martyn Richard Jones
Miss Piggy said, “Never eat more than you can lift”. That statement is no less true today, especially when it comes to Big Data. Continue reading
20 Friday Mar 2015
Posted in Big Data, Consider this, good start, goodstart
Tags
Big Data, contradictions, data management, good start, Good Strategy, goodstart, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones
I have written at length about the fundamental contradictions of Big Data, but what I have omitted in the past is quite possibly the biggest contradiction of all. Probably because it has more to do with how Big Data is continually hyped, rather than having anything to do with Big Data as a bag of technologies – which has a whole assortment of problems in its own right.
Last time I spoke with you about the contradictions of the Big Data it was about the three Vs of volume, variety and velocity. In general, it was a view that was well received, even if not widely understood. Which of course is close enough for government work. But, get ready for “something completely different”.
If on the one hand some folk can claim that Big Data provides fact based insights and reliable forecasts of future habits, trends and preferences, then why is it so difficult to produce and socialise – yes, I like to use that term – Big Data success stories?
In short, I think we have arrived at the stage in Big Data’s cycle where it is reasonable to ask pundits to either put up or shut up.
So, why aren’t the current Big Data success fables accompanied by facts, such as names of those involved (at least businesses), the sponsors, the suppliers, the purpose of the exercise, the desired outcomes, the data used, how it is processed, what the results were, and what tangible benefits, if any, were accrued or are accruable. If that is not enough, then let people mention the technology used, the products purchased or licensed and the methodology followed.
In short, what I would like to know is why are the evangelists of Big Data telling us that bigger data is better, that more variety leads to greater insight, and that velocity is king. Why do we we told that Big Data almost assuredly results in better decisions, by people who are coy, shy or secretive about almost facts and data coming out of Big Data projects?
I have been reminded, time and time again, that there are Big Data success stories out there, and I have even been told that this information would be fully shared with me once it was agreed with the ‘clients’ that it was okay to do so. Okay, that’s fine, I know Big Data is a roaring success story (at least in people’s minds,) and I also know that it takes some time to make things up – some people are just not creative. Sure, I was told about these ‘successes’ some time ago, and you know, I’m not expecting anything that’s worth shaking a stick at, either now or later, but I’m still waiting, boys. Notwithstanding, you will still called you out as vacuous bullshitters when the time comes.
“But” I hear you cry “there is a wealth of success stories in the presses”.
Well, no, and you would wrong and gullible and foolish to think, but that is your problem, but unfortunately also mine, because this is my profession that you are playing fast and loose with.
The fact is that there is “wealth” of content that people try and pass off as legitimate Big Data success stories, but they aren’t in fact success stories, in any way, shape or form.
The thing is, people may read the blog title and even the stand-fast, but will be less inclined to actually read the article, so what remains is the impression that there are ‘loads of Big Data success stories’. But if people actually read the articles and were intelligent enough to understand them, then they would realise that inevitably there is a massive mismatch between the title of these pieces and the content. Indeed, if these pieces were actually pieces of advertising, rather than blog comments, they would be denounced in some jurisdictions for not fulfilling the advertising criteria of legal, decent and honest.
There is one more thing that Big Data evangelists (or any self-styled pundit, guru or expert for that matter) should understand, internalise and remember. If you say that you have a Big Data success story, with all the details, and that isn’t in fact the case, and it isn’t even remotely a success story or even true, then you are simply lying, and that’s deceit, it’s unprofessional and it’s unethical, and you are a scoundrel. So live with or fix it, the choice is yours.
Many thanks for reading.
20 Friday Mar 2015
Posted in Big Data, Consider this, data management, good start, goodstart
Tags
Big Data, data architecture, data management, good start, Good Strat, Good Strategy, goodstart, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones
Many people come up to me in the street and ask me what Big Data is all about. It has happened to me so many times in the past that I am convinced that it might just happen to you as well. I know sort of thing, I read the Big Data tealeaves. Nothing gets past me.
The first time a complete stranger came up to me in public and said “Hello, will you tell me what this Big Data lark is all about then?” I was lost for words, you just ask my Aunt Dolly, he can vouch for that, no problem. Later that day I read a book – it was my dad’s book – and I then decided to adopt a strategy.
Therefore, in the spirit of springtime goodwill to all men and women, I have put together this blog piece in that hope that it will enlighten, help and entertain.
What is big data?
Big Data can be characterised by the 10 Vs – yes, 10, not 4. Which, in my book, is more than enough to bring up-to-speed the average Big Data John or Jane that one meets on the street, and who naturally wish to be informed of such matters.
In layperson’s terms this a series of landmarks and pointers in the analytics space used to frame and guide the didactic aspects of Big Data.
The fundamental Vs of the Big Data canon are these:
So, let me now explain what each of these characteristics mean to those who might know and for those who might want to know.
Vagueness: This is perhaps the trickiest of questions to address, given the vast panorama that is cast before this incredibly complex yet easily graspable concept. But let me state this, and let there be no mistake about it. At this point in time, what makes Big Data vague is also what makes Big Data specific, explicit and certain. That is to say, in order to ‘come to an understanding’ of Big Data, it is necessary to completely embrace the dialectic of knowing the unknowable. So belief is an absolute essential element – belief and data, that is.
Volume – If there ever was a time to “pump up the volume”, we have it here with Big Data.
Big, voluminous, gorgeously rotund and infinite. Big Data is called Big Data because there is a lovely, roly-poly, likeable never-ending load of it. Its volumes can be measured in zeta-bytes, which you can be assured, is a helluva lot of data.
Variety – As they might say down my way, “variety is the spice of life, innit”. This is what makes Big Data so special. So appealing.
Because before Big Data there was absolutely no variety in anything, at all. We lived in a bland world, bereft of detail, nuance and diversity. Nothing could be measured, analysed or explained, because we lacked Big Data. We were ignorant. So ignorant and stupid that we couldn’t see the sense of putting the diapers next to the beer, or of offering three for the price of two.
Fortunately, today this is no longer the case if we don’t want it to be, and thanks to Big Data we have a veritable sensorial explosion. No longer is IT just a couple of symbols scribbled in crayon on someone’s school notebook.
Virility – Move over Smart Data, the new kid on the block is Big Data.
If Big Data were described in the manner of a religious text, it would be accompanied by a never ending narrative of begets.
So, what does that mean?
Simply stated, Big Data creates itself, in and of itself. The more Big Data you have, the more Big Data gets created. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy in 360 degree, high-definition, poly-faceted and all-encompassing knowing. The sort of thing that governments would pay an arm and a leg to get their mitts on.
Velocity – Velocity is of the essence. Velocity kills the competition. More velocity, less haste.
We demand that service is ‘velocious’. ‘Everything’ must be ‘now’, or it’s too late.
This means we need to be able to handle Big Data at velocity – at the speed of need.
Charles Babbage once stated (or maybe it was more than once) that “whenever the work is itself light, it becomes necessary, in order to economize time, to increase the velocity.”
But remember, we are dealing with mega-velocity here, so don’t drink and drive the Big Data Steamship, Star-ship or Mustang.
Vendible – If you can sell it, and sell it as Big Data, then it ‘is’ Big Data. If you can’t, then it’s not. The saleability of Big Data proves its existence.
So, what are the vendible aspects of Big Data?
Let’s leave that easy question for another day. But for now I can confidently state that it is used to mobilise armies of commentators, industry analysts, publicists, punters, writers, bloggers, gurus, futurologists, conference organisers, conference speakers, educators, customer relationship managers, salespeople, marketers and admen.
Vaticination – Edmund Burke is down on record as stating that “you can never plan the future by the past”. Now Burke may have been a clever person when it came to many things, but he wasn’t exactly a whiz when it came to Big Data.
There are people in the world who are in no doubt that Big Data provides the sort of visionary and predictive powers only previously obtainable through ritual sacrifice, magic potions and the casting of spells. Others are highly critical of the understatement implicit in this belief.
For many, Big Data will make the Oracle of Delphi look like a mere call centre.
This is why the power of vaticination plays a characteristically important role in the world of Big Data.
Voracity – This is based on the quasi-rationalist argument that Big Data is big and it has an omnipresent and insatiable self-fulfilling desire.
Big Data comes with an attendant requirement for hardware, even if it is a whole load of consumer hardware tacked together in a magnificent and miraculous mesh of magic.
Big Data can be characterised by voracity, but this comes hand in hand with the ‘ventripotent’ IT industry.
Veracity – The eminence of the data being captured for Big Data handling can vary significantly. The quality or lack of quality of the data naturally has the potential to impact the accuracy of analysis using that data.
Before Big Data arrived on the scene we knew nothing about Data Quality or data verification. This is why ETL and Data Cleansing tools lacked the power to effectively quality check and verify data, to ensure that any erroneous or anomalous data was rejected or flagged.
But now, with the sophistication of tools such as ‘grep’ and ‘awk’ at our disposal, we have the power in our hands to ensure nothing ‘dodgy’ gets into the analytical mix.
Vanity – In my opinion, to fully grasp the underlying and profound meaning of Big Data, it is essential for us to understand the difference between vanity and conceit. Max Counsell claimed that “Vanity is the flatterer of the soul”. Goethe characterised vanity as being “a desire for personal glory”. After an incident with an Anarchist (presumably a Big Data Anarchist), Blackadder remarked to Baldrick that “The criminal’s vanity always makes them make one tiny but fatal mistake. Theirs was to have their entire conspiracy printed and published in plain manuscript”.
So that ends the brief rundown of the defining characteristics of Big Data.
So, to summarise. That, which has passed before, necessarily divulges both the upside and downside of Big Data. By reaching out, opening up the kimono and relating the 10 Vs we are disclosing that which cannot be disclosed, exhibiting the absence of essential essence, and thereby opening up the entire field, discipline, profession, science and art to examination, questioning and ridicule.
Many thanks for reading.
10 Tuesday Mar 2015
Posted in All Data, Big Data, Consider this, dark data, Good Strat
Tags
All Data, Big Data, dark data, data architecture, data management, Good Strat, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones
Dark data, what is it and why all the fuss?
First, I’ll give you the short answer. The right dark data, just like its brother right Big Data, can be monetised – honest, guv! There’s loadsa money to be made from dark data by ‘them that want to’, and as value propositions go, seriously, what could be more attractive?
Let’s take a look at the market.
Gartner defines dark data as “the information assets organizations collect, process and store during regular business activities, but generally fail to use for other purposes” (IT Glossary – Gartner)
Techopedia describes dark data as being data that is “found in log files and data archives stored within large enterprise class data storage locations. It includes all data objects and types that have yet to be analyzed for any business or competitive intelligence or aid in business decision making.” (Techopedia – Cory Jannsen)
Cory also wrote that “IDC, a research firm, stated that up to 90 percent of big data is dark data.”
In an interesting whitepaper from C2C Systems it was noted that “PST files and ZIP files account for nearly 90% of dark data by IDC Estimates.” and that dark data is “Very simply, all those bits and pieces of data floating around in your environment that aren’t fully accounted for:” (Dark Data, Dark Email – C2C Systems)
Elsewhere, Charles Fiori defined dark data as “data whose existence is either unknown to a firm, known but inaccessible, too costly to access or inaccessible because of compliance concerns.” (Shedding Light on Dark Data – Michael Shashoua)
Not quite the last insight, but in a piece published by Datameer, John Nicholson wrote that “Research firm IDC estimates that 90 percent of digital data is dark.” And went on to state that “This dark data may come in the form of machine or sensor logs” (Shine Light on Dark Data – Joe Nicholson via Datameer)
Finally, Lug Bergman of NGDATA wrote this in a sponsored piece in Wired: “It” – dark data – “is different for each organization, but it is essentially data that is not being used to get a 360 degree view of a customer.
Okay, let’s see if we can be a bit more specific about the content of dark data?
Items on the dark data ticket include: Email; Instant messages; documents; Sharepoint content; content of collaboration databases; ZIP files; log files; archived sensor and signal data; archived web content; aged audit trails; operational database backups – full and incremental; roll-back, redo and spooled data files; sunsetted applications (code and documentation); partially developed and then abandoned applications; and, code snippets.
Most importantly, dark data is data that is not actively in use, is underutilised, or is something else. Seriously.
So, the conclusion that some have come to is this: there is a vast collection of data in various formats waiting to be monetised.
Personally, the idea that really grabs my attention is the potential ability to do novel forensic research on email. If only to find out what happened in the past.
For example, maybe it would be fascinating to see how significant challenges were identified, flagged and discussed; how strategic responses to those challenges were formulated, chosen and executed; and, how the outcomes of all of that process were reflected in email communications.
I think that this line of work can be very interesting for some people, and that interesting insights may be uncovered, but I would hate to have to put a tangible value on it, if only to avoid adding to the already galactic magnitudes of nonsense and hype surrounding certain data topics.
There are other more mundane uses of dark data.
Imagine that you are just about to embark on a Data Warehouse project (you really are a late adopter aren’t you), and you want establish a base collection of historical data. Where do you get that historical data from?
Right! Operational databases are not characteristically used to store significant amounts of historical reference data and historical transactions beyond a certain time window; there are performance and other reasons for keeping OLTP systems as lean as possible, so, initial loads of historical data is typically recreated in the Data Warehouse from backups, audit trails or logs.
You don’t need a Chief Data Officer in order to be able to catalogue all your data assets. However, it is still good idea to have a reliable inventory of all your business data, including the euphemistically termed Big Data and dark data.
If you have such an inventory, you will know:
What you have, where it is, where it came from, what it is used in, what qualitative or quantitative value it may have, and how it relates to other data (including metadata) and the business.
What needs to be kept, and for how long, and what can be safely discarded, and when.
The risks associated with the retention or loss of that data.
If you don’t have such a catalogue and have never done a data inventory then a full data inventory and audit seems to be your new best friend.
Simply stated, you may have dark data that has value, or it may be a simple collection of worthless digital nostalgia. But if you don’t know what you have, it may pay to find out what’s there, and if necessary, to let it go.
There is no point in hoarding unneeded and unwanted rubbish data. That is simply not good data management.
Finally a word on all the fuss surrounding dark data.
Failure to monetize when there is value to be obtained from dark data is one thing, claiming that value can be invariably obtained whilst actually not knowing what the data is, or how it could be monetised, is just adding to the mountain of data related ‘nonsense and hype’ doing the rounds these days. Please consider not adding to that mountain.
British Rail, the national UK rail Company, used to be notorious for the number of delays and cancellations to services, and their reasons for failing to meet their obligations became stranger and stranger.
In winter, it would snow and there would be problems. And people would ask ‘how come you couldn’t deal with the snow this year, we’ve had snow for centuries?’ And back came the answers ‘Yes, Sir, but this year it was the wrong type of snow’. In autumn (the fall), it was ‘the wrong types of leaves, and ‘the wrong type of rain’, and in Summer, the ‘wrong type of sunshine’ and so on and so forth.
I hope this will not be the excuse from the Big Data and dark data pundits and punters when the much-vaunted and ‘almost’ guaranteed monetisation isn’t frequently realised.
‘Of course Big Data gives you big dollar benefits, it was just littered with the wrong type of data’ or ‘you just weren’t trying hard enough’.
Many thanks for reading.
01 Sunday Mar 2015
Posted in Ask Martyn, Big Data, Consider this
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 bigI 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 varietyIt 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 velocitySo, 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 DataWe 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 newData 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.
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 questionableDATA: “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.
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.
01 Sunday Mar 2015
Posted in All Data, Big Data, Consider this
Tags
All Data, Big Data, data management, Good Strat, good strat blog, Good Strategy, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones
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:
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:
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.
01 Sunday Mar 2015
Posted in Big Data, Consider this, Good Strat, Good Strategy, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones
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 toldWe’ve been told that business Big Data is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and that its major characteristics are:
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 bigI 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 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!
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!
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.
17 Tuesday Feb 2015
Posted in Big Data, Consider this, Good Strat, Good Strategy, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones, Strategy
Tags
Analytics, Big Data, data management, Good Strat, Good Strategy, Martyn Jones, Martyn Richard Jones
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
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