How Many Types of Big Data Exist?

March 18, 2016

Navigate to “The Five Different Types of Big Data.” If you are a student of classification, you will find the categories set forth in this write up an absolute hoot. The author is an expert, I assume, in energy, transportation, food, and data. Oh, goodie. Food.

I have not thought too much about the types of Big Data. I usually think only when a client pays me to perform that function. An example is my analysis of the concept “real time” information. You can find that write up at this link. Big requires me to understand the concept of relative to what. I find this type of thinking uninteresting, but obviously the editors at Forbes find the idea just another capitalist tool.

When I learned that an expert had chased down the types of Big Data, I was and remain confused. “Big” describes something that is relative. “Data” is the plural of datum and refers to more than two facts or statistics, quantities, characters, symbols, etc.

I am not sure what Big Data is, and like many marketing buzzwords, the phrase has become a catchall for vendors of all manner of computer related products and services.

Here are the five types of Big Data.

  1. Big data. I like the Kurt Friedrich Gödel touch.
  2. Fast data. “Relative to what?” I ask.
  3. Dark data. “Darker than what? Is this secret versus un-secret or some other yardstick?” I wonder.
  4. Lost data. I pose to myself, “Lost as in unknown, known but unknown, or some other Rumsfeldesque state of understanding?”
  5. New data. I think, “I really don’t want to think about what ‘new’ means? Is this new as in never before seen or Madison Avenue ‘new’ like an improved Colgate Total toothpaste with whitener.

I like the tag on the article “Recommended by Forbes.” Quite an endorsement from a fine example of capitalistic tool analysis.

Stephen E Arnold, March 18, 2016

Comments

Comments are closed.

  • Archives

  • Recent Posts

  • Meta