Open Source For You — December 2017

http://www.OpenSourceForU.com | OPEN SOURCE FOR YOU | DECEMBER 2017 | 103

Insight For U & Me

that, we need to understand where we can find this data and
what we can do with it.
Let us see how Big Data can really help different
organisations in their business

1. Targeted marketing: There are several small businesses
   which cannot compete with the huge advertising budgets
   that large organisations have at their disposal. In order
   to remain in the game, they have to spend less, yet reach
   qualified buyers. This is where the need for analysis and
   measurement of data comes in, in order to target the
   person most likely to turn into a customer. There is a huge
   amount of data that is freely accessible through different
   tools like Google Insights, etc. Organisations can find
   exactly what different people are looking for, when they
   are really looking for it and also find out their locations.
   For instance, the CDC (Centre for Disease Control, USA)
   uses the Big Data provided by Google to analyse a large
   number of searches relating to the flu. With the obtained
   data, researchers are able to focus their efforts where there
   is a greater need for flu vaccines. The same technique can
   be applied for other products as well.


2. Actionable insights: Big Data can really become like
   drinking from a fire hose if we do not know how to turn
   different facts and figures into useable information. But
   as soon as an organisation learns how to master different
   analytical tools, which turn its metrics into readable reports,
   graphs and charts, it can make decisions that are more
   proactive and targeted. And that’s when it will gain a clear
   understanding of the ‘big problems’ affecting the business.


3. Social eavesdropping: A large chunk of the information in
   Big Data is obtained from social chatter on several social
   networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. By keeping an
   eagle eye on what is being said in different social channels,
   organisations can really understand how the public
   perceives them and what to do if they need to improve their
   reputation. For example, the Twitter mood predicts the
   stock market. Johan Bollen once tracked how the collective
   mood from large sets of Twitter feeds correlated with the
   Dow Jones Industrial Average. The algorithm which was
   used by Bollen and his group actually predicted market
   changes with 87.6 per cent accuracy.

Applications of Big Data
There is a huge demand for Big Data nowadays, and there are
numerous areas where it is already being implemented. Let’s
have a look at some of them.

1. Big Data is used in different government sectors for different
   tasks like power theft investigation, deceit recognition and
   ecological fortification. Big Data is also used to examine
   different food based infections by the FDA.


2. It is widely used in the healthcare industry by physicians
   and doctors to keep track of their patients’ history.


3. Big Data is also used in the education sector by
   implementing different techniques such as adaptive learning,

problem control, etc, to reform different educational courses.

4. Big Data is used in fraud detection in the banking sector.


5. It is used by different search engines to provide the best
   search results.


6. Different price comparison websites make use of Big Data
   to come up with the best options for their users.


7. Big Data is also used for analysing and processing
   the data obtained from different sensors and actuators
   connected to IoT.


8. Different speech recognition products such as Google
   Voice and Siri also make use of Big Data to recognise the
   speech patterns of the user.


9. Big Data and data science have taken the gaming
   experience to new heights. Different games are now
   designed using various Big Data and machine learning
   algorithms, which have the self-improving capability
   when a player jumps to a higher level.


10. Big Data is of great help for the recommender and
    suggestion tool which prompts us about similar products
    to purchase on different online shopping platforms like
    Amazon, Flipkart, etc.

Figure 5: Different ways in which Big Data can help any business

(Image source: googleimages.com)

Using Data

to Improve

Performance

How can I

optimize my

marketing

budget?

How do I

define my target

market?

Which offer

generates the

greatest

response?

How do I

improve

customer

retention?

What is

the Lifetime

Value of my

customer?

Which

channel is

most

effective?

Which

demographic

responds to

my offer?

How can I

measure

marketing

results?

(^81)
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By: Vivek Ratan
The author has completed his B. Tech in electronics and
instrumentation engineering. He is currently working as
an automation test engineer at Infosys, Pune. He can be
reached at [email protected].
[1] ‘Data Science for Business’ by Tom Facet
[2] http://www.wikipedia.org/
[3] http://bigdata-madesimple.com/
[4] https://bigdata.wayne.edu/
References