Data has become the most critical factor in business today. As a result, different technologies, methodologies, and systems have been invented to process, transform, analyze, and store data in this data-driven world.
However, there is still much confusion regarding the key areas of Big Data, Data Analytics, and Data Science. In this post, we will demystify these concepts to better understand each technology and how they relate to each other.
Data TL:DR
- Big data refers to any large and complex collection of data.
- Data analytics is the process of extracting meaningful information from data.
- Data science is a multidisciplinary field that aims to produce broader insights.
Each of these technologies complements one another yet can be used as separate entities. For instance, big data can be used to store large sets of data, and data analytics techniques can extract information from simpler datasets.
Big data
As the name suggests, big data simply refers to extremely large data sets. This size, combined with the complexity and evolving nature of these data sets, has enabled them to surpass the capabilities of traditional data management tools.
This way, data warehouses and data lakes have emerged as the go-to solutions to handle big data, far surpassing the power of traditional databases.
Some data sets that we can consider truly big data include:
- Stock market data
- Social media
- Sporting events and games
- Scientific and research data
Characteristics of big data
- Volume. Big data is enormous, far surpassing the capabilities of normal data storage and processing methods. The volume of data determines if it can be categorized as big data.
- Variety. Large data sets are not limited to a single kind of data—instead, they consist of various kinds of data. Big data consists of different kinds of data, from tabular databases to images and audio data regardless of data structure.
- Velocity. The speed at which data is generated. In Big Data, new data is constantly generated and added to the data sets frequently. This is highly prevalent when dealing with continuously evolving data such as social media, IoT devices, and monitoring services.
- Veracity or variability. There will inevitably be some inconsistencies in the data sets due to the enormity and complexity of big data. Therefore, you must account for variability to properly manage and process big data.
- Value. The usefulness of Big Data assets. The worthiness of the output of big data analysis can be subjective and is evaluated based on unique business objectives.
Types of big data
- Structured data. Any data set that adheres to a specific structure can be called structured data. These structured data sets can be processed relatively easily compared to other data types as users can exactly identify the structure of the data. A good example for structured data will be a distributed RDBMS which contains data in organized table structures.
- Semi-structured data. This type of data does not adhere to a specific structure yet retains some kind of observable structure such as a grouping or an organized hierarchy. Some examples of semi-structured data will be markup languages (XML), web pages, emails, etc.
- Unstructured data. This type of data consists of data that does not adhere to a schema or a preset structure. It is the most common type of data when dealing with big data—things like text, pictures, video, and audio all come up under this type.
Big data systems and tools
When it comes to managing big data, many solutions are available to store and process the data sets. Cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP offer their own data warehousing and data lake implementations, such as:
- AWS Redshift
- GCP BigQuery
- Azure SQL Data Warehouse
- Azure Synapse Analytics
- Azure Data Lake
Apart from that, there are specialized providers such as Snowflake, Databriks, and even open-source solutions like Apache Hadoop, Apache Storm, Openrefine, etc., that provide robust Big Data solutions on any kind of hardware, including commodity hardware.
Skills required to become a big data specialist
- Analytical skills: These skills are essential for making sense of data, and determining which data is relevant when creating reports and looking for solutions.
- Creativity: You need to have the ability to create new methods to gather, interpret, and analyze a data strategy. Mathematics and statistical skills: Good, old-fashioned “number crunching” is also necessary, be it in data science, data analytics, or big data.
- Computer science: Computers are the backbone of every data strategy. Programmers will have a constant need to come up with algorithms to process data into insights.
- Business skills: Big data professionals will need to have an understanding of the business objectives that are in place, as well as the underlying processes that drive the growth of the business and its profits.
Data analytics
Data Analytics is the process of analyzing data in order to extract meaningful data from a given data set. These analytics techniques and methods are carried out on big data in most cases, though they certainly can be applied to any data set.
The primary goal of data analytics is to help individuals or organizations to make informed decisions based on patterns, behaviors, trends, preferences, or any type of meaningful data extracted from a collection of data.
For example, businesses can use analytics to identify their customer preferences, purchase habits, and market trends and then create strategies to address them and handle evolving market conditions.
In a scientific sense, a medical research organization can collect data from medical trials and evaluate the effectiveness of drugs or treatments accurately by analyzing those research data.
Combining these analytics with data visualization techniques will help you get a clearer picture of the underlying data and present them more flexibly and purposefully.
Types of analytics
While there are multiple analytics methods and techniques for data analytics, there are four types that apply to any data set.
- Descriptive. This refers to understanding what has happened in the data set. As the starting point in any analytics process, the descriptive analysis will help users understand what has happened in the past.
- Diagnostic. The next step of descriptive is diagnostic, which will consider the descriptive analysis and build on top of it to understand why something happened. It allows users to gain knowledge on the exact information of root causes of past events, patterns, etc.
- Predictive. As the name suggests, predictive analytics will predict what will happen in the future. This will combine data from descriptive and diagnostic analytics and use ML and AI techniques to predict future trends, patterns, problems, etc.
- Prescriptive. Prescriptive analytics takes predictions from predictive analytics and takes it a step further by exploring how the predictions will happen. This can be considered the most important type of analytics as it allows users to understand future events and tailor strategies to handle any predictions effectively.
Accuracy of data analytics
The most important thing to remember is that the accuracy of the analytics is based on the underlying data set. If there are inconsistencies or errors in the dataset, it will result in inefficiencies or outright incorrect analytics.
Any good analytical method will consider external factors like data purity, bias, and variance in the analytical methods. Normalization, purifying, and transforming raw data can significantly help in this aspect.
Data analytics tools and technologies
There are both open source and commercial products for data analytics. They will range from simple analytics tools such as Microsoft Excel’s Analysis ToolPak that comes with Microsoft Office to SAP BusinessObjects suite and open source tools such as Apache Spark.
When considering cloud providers, Azure is known as the best platform for data analytics needs. It provides a complete toolset to cater to any need with its Azure Synapse Analytics suite, Apache Spark-based Databricks, HDInsights, Machine Learning, etc.
AWS and GCP also provide tools such as Amazon QuickSight, Amazon Kinesis, GCP Stream Analytics to cater to analytics needs.
Additionally, specialized BI tools provide powerful analytics functionality with relatively simple configurations.
Examples here include Microsoft PowerBI, SAS Business Intelligence, and Periscope Data Even programming languages like Python or R can be used to create custom analytics scripts and visualizations for more targeted and advanced analytics needs.
Finally, ML algorithms like TensorFlow and scikit-learn can be considered part of the data analytics toolbox—they are popular tools to use in the analytics process.
Skills required to become a data analyst
- Programming skills: Knowing programming languages, such as R and Python, are imperative for any data analyst.
- Statistical skills and mathematics: Descriptive and inferential statistics, as well as experimental designs, are required skills for data scientists.
- Machine learning skills
- Data wrangling skills: The ability to map raw data and convert it into another format that enables more convenient consumption of the data
- Communication and data visualization skills
- Data intuition: It is crucial for a professional to be able to think like a data analyst.
Data science
Data science is a field that deals with unstructured, structured data, and semi-structured data. It involves practices like data cleansing, data preparation, data analysis, and much more.
Data science is the combination of: statistics, mathematics, programming, and problem-solving;, capturing data in ingenious ways; the ability to look at things differently; and the activity of cleansing, preparing, and aligning data.
This umbrella term includes various techniques that are used when extracting insights and information from data.
Skills required to become a data scientist
- Education: 88 percent have master’s degrees, and 46 percent have PhDs
- In-depth knowledge of SAS or R. For data science, R is generally preferred.
- Python coding: Python is the most common coding language that is used in data science, along with Java, Perl, and C/C++.
- Hadoop platform: Although not always a requirement, knowing the Hadoop platform is still preferred for the field. Having some experience in Hive or Pig is also beneficial.
- SQL database/coding: Although NoSQL and Hadoop have become a significant part of data science, it is still preferred if you can write and execute complex queries in SQL.
- Working with unstructured data: It is essential that a data scientist can work with unstructured data, whether on social media, video feeds, or audio.
How are these technologies impact the economy
Data has become the engine that drives almost all of today’s activities, no matter if they’re in the fields of healthcare, technology, education, research, or retail. Additionally, business orientation has evolved from a product-focused model to a data-focused one.
Companies of all sizes value information, no matter how trivial that data may seem at first glance. Information analysis and visualization helps marketers and analysts acquire actionable business insights.
This demand has created a need for experts who can pull useful, meaningful insights out of the terabytes of data available today.
While big data helps banking, retail, and other industries by supplying important technologies like fraud-detection and operational analysis systems, data analytics enables industries like banking, energy management, healthcare, travel, and transport develop new advancements by utilizing historical, and data-based trend analysis.
Data science expands on that in more ways by enabling companies to explore new strategies in scientific discovery, medical advancements, web development, digital advertisements, ecommerce – literally, anything you can imagine.
What does a data scientist, big data professional and data analyst do
In an effort to better understand the whole data science vs. data analytics comparison, let’s take a look at what each occupation does.
Data scientists work closely with business stakeholders to gain an understanding of their goals, and figure out how to use data to meet those goals.
They are responsible for cleaning and organizing data, collecting data sets, mining data for patterns, refining algorithms, integrating and storing data, and building training sets.
As for Big Data professionals, well, the term “Big Data” is no longer a “big” thing when describing a career or job position.
Big Data professionals are now known more as analytics professionals who review, analyze, and report on the massive amounts of data stored and maintained by the company.
These professionals identify the challenges of Big Data and devise solutions, employ fundamental statistical techniques, improve the quality of data for reporting and analysis, and access, modify, and manipulate the data.
Finally, data analysts collect, clean, and study data sets to turn them into actionable resources to help solve problems or meet goals within the organization.
If it seems that the three occupations have a significant amount of overlap, that’s because they do!
Each business has its own structure and procedures, and you are bound to see some blurring of the distinctions between these positions. Perhaps, in some companies, the data scientist wears multiple hats.
