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Soumitra Banerjee
Soumitra Banerjee

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Big Data, What's the Big Deal

What is Big Data?

A huge amount of data is being generated on daily basis from different devices connected through internet. This data is being stored mostly in clouds by businesses and they use this data to enhance their business activity.

How big is Big Data?

As of 2021 our entire digital universe is estimated to be more than 44 zettabytes of data and almost 2.5 quintillion bytes(A quintillion is a million times a trillion) of data are produced by humans every day. It is expected that 463 exabytes of data will be generated each day by humans as of 2025.
It's huge right? Even I am in astonishment, as I am writing this.
It is even more interesting to know that almost 90% of the total data has been generated in the last two years alone.

What we do with these data?

Well well well!! hold your breath.
What if I told you that the data generated out of your device is actually used to create an exact copy of yours? You won't believe right? But this is what it is. They track each and every move you make on internet and your each action is stored in the form of raw data. Data Scientists use these data and shape up a human behavior exactly like you and this is know as Data modeling. Then businesses use these models to manipulate you through different means, be it notifications, ad, suggestions etc.

But, not everything businesses does are bad. In fact majority of the cases are for greater good of humankind. One such example is the use of big data in Medical/Life sciences industries. In the year of 2020 the Corona Virus pandemic had disrupted every possible thing human can think of except internet. Medical industries worked closely with the governments and Hospitals across the world to ensure the track of the rising COVID cases. The data generated by the Hospitals were analyzed and industries started predicting which are the places that needs special attention. Data from all the COVID victims who were admitted in hospitals were collected and efforts were being made on how to detect pattern among the various COVID cases, how to minimize the spread of virus, for what age group the virus is affecting more, in which climate the virus grows stronger and so on. While medical teams were working day and night in treating people and taking care of their immunity power, tech industries were busy getting the data together to help people in every way possible. Even, while making the COVID Vaccine the test results and side effects of each volunteers were recorded in the form of data and were analyzed by various healthcare professionals across the world to improve the quality of vaccine.

If you got some interest in Big Data and want to know more, check out these links

  1. https://www.sas.com/en_in/insights/big-data/what-is-big-data.html

  2. https://www.ibm.com/in-en/analytics/hadoop/big-data-analytics

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