Here's What You Need to Know About Big Data

What the hell is "big data," and why does everybody keep saying it will change the future? If you want to understand the answer, you've got to get beyond the buzzword and back to the term's real meaning.

Big data is data that contains enough observations to demand unusual handling because of its sheer size, though what is unusual changes over time and varies from one discipline to another. Scientific computing is accustomed to pushing the envelope, constantly developing techniques to address relentless growth in dataset size, but many other disciplines are now just discovering the value — and hence the challenges — of working with data at the unwieldy end of the scale.

Big data describes datasets that are so large, complex, or rapidly changing that they push the very limits of our analytical capability.It's a subjective term: What seems "big" today may seem modest in a few years when our analytic capacity has improved. While big data can be about anything, the most important kinds of big data — and perhaps the only ones worth the effort — are those that can have a big impact through what they tell us about society, public health, the economy, scientific research, or any number of other large-scale subjects.