Big data takes huge quantities of disparate data and puts it together for analysis. The information can come from all sorts of places: e-mails, online articles, comments on social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+, videos, photos, audio files or even measurement values. But wherever the information has come from, the aim remains the same – to spot patterns. But since these data sets are so huge and unordered, you can’t expect to make sense of them with a traditional database or conventional analysis tools. Now new data mining tools and techniques are to make these mountains of data useful and manageable. The intention is to use the insights gained commercially.
