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What is Data?
Data is simply facts and figures. When processed and contextualized, data becomes information.
Everything is data
- What we say
- Where we go
- What we do
How to measure data?
byte - 1 letter
1 Kilobyte - 1024 B
1 Megabyte - 1024 KB
1 Gigabyte - 1024 MB
1 Terabyte - 1024 GB
(1,099,511,627,776 Bytes)
1 Petabyte - 1024 TB
1 Exabyte - 1024 PB
1 Zettabyte - 1024 EB
1 Yottabyte - 1024 ZB
Examples of Traditional Data
- Banking Records
- Student Information
- Employee Profiles
- Customer Details
- Sales Transactions
When Data becomes Big Data?
When data expands
- Banking: One bank branch vs. global consolidation (e.g., CitiBank)
- Education: One college vs. nationwide student data (e.g., US News)
- Media: Traditional news vs. user-generated content on Social Media
When data gets granular
- Monitoring CPU/Memory usage every second
- Cell phone location & usage logs
- IoT sensor telemetry (temperature, humidity, etc.)
- Social media posts, reactions, likes
- Live traffic data from vehicles and sensors
These fine-grained data points fuel powerful analytics and real-time insights.
Why Collect So Much Data?
- Storage is cheap and abundant
- Tech has advanced to process massive data efficiently
- Businesses use data to innovate, predict trends, and grow