What is big data?
Edd Dumbill,
Jan 17, 2012
A nice definition: "Big data is data that exceeds the processing capacity of conventional database systems. The data is too big, moves too fast, or doesn't fit the strictures of your database architectures. To gain value from this data, you must choose an alternative way to process it." The location of all the traffic in a large city, for example, would be an instance of Big Data. So how do we work with it? "Today's commodity hardware, cloud architectures and open source software bring big data processing into the reach of the less well-resourced." What does that mean for education? I think most of all it forces us to reassess sentences like "the fact is..." because the 'fact', whatever it is, is big, messy, and will be different tomorrow. That doesn't mean there's no fact - it does mean, though, that the fact does not fit neatly into slogans, management principles or textbooks.
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