Why is Data the King of Everything?
Data can be defined as a collection of facts, numbers, observations that can be processed by machines. In 2012, IBM estimated that an average human being leaves an average of 500 MB of digital footprint each day. Data is a machine-readable raw commodity that can be converted into valuable business information.
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.” - Arthur Conan Doyle, Author of Sherlock Holmes
The important types of data that can be collected are personal data, transactional data, web data and data collected by sensor-embedded machines.
Personal data can be used to authorize, authenticate and give you personalized recommendations as ads or service.
Transactional data is data recorded when you perform any activity – be it buying something from an e-commerce site or simply browsing through websites. This kind of data is used to keep track of user behavior.
Web data is everything that is available on the Internet which can be ethically extracted for your own or organizational use. It involves scraping of websites that have data publicly available. For example, share market data, weather information or sports statistics are used for market research, analysis, and predictions of events.
Sensor embedded machines collect data like real-time weather information, physical activities like records from your fitness band or smartwatch, and other important information like proximity, chemicals etc.
“Torture the data, and it will confess to anything.” – Ronald Coase, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics
How is data collected?
To put it simply, data is collected by recording activities, changes, and interaction behavior. For example, if you are collecting your website’s data like site visits, page views and ad clicks, you use an analytics tool that helps record each activity. From this data, you can make the necessary optimizations to your website like design changes, page speed optimizations etc.
E-commerce companies collect data by recording user search behavior, product purchase history, internet browsing records, and eye-tracking data i.e. you can dig out data as specific as how long and where exactly the users are spending time on a website.
“The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.” – Carly Fiorina
Collected data can be used in different ways:
- A business organization can use your social media data to show your targeted ads.
- The government can use data to strengthen their services and organize their processes.
- Financial institutions can use data to segment their customers and also extract important transactional insights and fraud detection.
- Manufacturing industries can embed sensors in machines to know how well the machine is performing and when it needs maintenance.
- Data can be used in other fields like Medicine to analyze health records, Sports to develop tactics, Research works to reach a conclusion, recommendation systems etc.
Data makes businesses more efficient, saves time and money and efforts and helps improve customer relationships.
Why is it important?
“Information is the oil of the 21st century, and analytics is the combustion engine.” – Peter Sondergaard
Data is the new oil. Every Industry is striving to collect more and more data. But collecting data alone is not the viable solution to problems. Data should be handled well. Every organization has to keep a set of professionals that work with data.
Data architects are responsible for designing database systems. Data engineers deal with the internals of database software. Sound knowledge of both these skills can make you a good Database Administrator.
Data administrators are the ones who know about the data sources and work out a plan for incorporating, bringing together and maintaining all the data. They execute the everyday task of maintaining the database environment to guarantee its availability and that it runs problem free by using database tools to monitor, fix and maintain the physics of the database software and the hardware on which it runs.
A well-kept data can then be used by Database analysts who are responsible for extracting analytical insights and generate reports that make sense to the particular organization.
Data Scientist is a very recent culture and it usually deals with BigData. The general tasks of a scientist are as same as an analyst but once the data starts increasing exponentially, it requires extremely sophisticated skills to get meaning out of that data.
Neosphere is an organization that provides professional IT training in Nepal with state-of-the-art infrastructure and highly competent instructors that are expert in their particular field.
You can join the SQL Server course to become a Database Administrator. Visit Neosphere office at New Baneshwor for further queries and information.