5 Ways Companies Are Leveraging Big Data.

• Author: Bagley, Judd

Big data is a buzzword these days, but that doesn't mean it's not relevant to your business. From healthcare to artificial intelligence, companies are using the technology with tremendous results. Here's how.

"Big data is a bit of a buzzword," says Ryan Barrett. "People in data science can use it to scare off those that aren't." As the Director of Credit Risk & Data Science at Sandy-based fintech firm Acima Credit, he works with data every day. "People who don't know about it are like, 'Oh my god, they're talking about big data.'"

Big data is one of those awe-inducing concepts, like artificial intelligence, that we non-initiates tend to leave at face value. As though it's a technological curtain we never think to peer behind, we nod in respect and pretend a deep familiarity, certain that we're the only ones left scratching our head. It's big, it's data, and it's going to change the world. Or so we're told. For data scientists, however, the reality is much more mundane.

DATA THAT IS ... BIG?

Data is information. A dataset is a collection of data points; a data point is merely a small bit of information about something. You could have a small dataset (the names and birthdates of everyone in your family, say). If you make it bigger--expanding it until it eventually contains the names and birthdates of everyone on earth--does it, at some unseen point, cross a barrier and become capital B capital D Big Data?

Not necessarily, says University of Utah Associate Professor of Information Systems Rohit Aggarwal. "Big data," he says, "is much more than just big datasets." Acknowledging that "there will always be hype cycles," he emphasizes that big data "is the development of open sourced ecosystem to store and process data." Based on Mr. Aggarwal's definition, is big data a technological framework for processing information? Is it the information itself? Or, is it a methodology for rendering the information useful? Mr. Barrett says, "Usually, when we're talking about big data we're talking about data that requires some sort of parallel processing. It's just a way to do multiple calculations, much quicker."

THE CHALLENGES OF BIG DATA

If the world's largest dataset is packed away in musty boxes and never processed, is it big data? As it turns out, this is the exact challenge facing many industries. Not the musty boxes--actually, probably the musty boxes, too--but the issue of sequestered data. Mr. Barrett talks about his former experience as a data...