An Introduction to

Big Data
A Beginner’s Guide
TABLE OF
CONTENTS
Introduction 01

What is big data? 02

The characteristics of big data 03

Applications of big data 04

Real-life examples of big data

implementation 06

Key big data & analytics terms you

should know 08

How to build your career in

data analytics 10

Get ready to launch your career in

data analytics 12
INTRODUCTION
Data analytics is the “brain” of some of the biggest and most successful brands
of our times. From the big tech giants, Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Netflix
to entertainment conglomerates like Disney, to disruptors like Uber and Airbnb,
enterprises are increasingly leveraging data analytics to drive innovation,
business growth, and profitability.

However, it’s not just these big names making the use of data analytics. 2017
marked a crucial year when 53% of organizations across telecom, finance,
education, and healthcare were found adopting data analytics — a sharp
jump from 17% in 2015. Today, the number has grown massively, with 67% of
small businesses spending more than $10K annually on analytics tools and
technologies.

As businesses grapple with more data than ever, they are increasingly relying
on data analytics to gain insights and make informed decisions. This is pushing
their demands for skilled specialists who can help them crunch through Big
Data, unlock the potentials and opportunities, and predict trends and failures.

The beginner’s handbook is aimed at introducing you to the concept of big

data, its characteristics, and applications. We’ll also discuss how to get started
with a career in big data and the courses you should pursue to move up the
career ladder in this emerging field.

1 | www.simplilearn.com
WHAT IS
BIG DATA?
Big data is an all-inclusive term,
representing the enormous volume of
complex data sets that companies and
governments generate in the present-day
digital environment.

Big data, typically measured in petabytes

or terabytes, materializes from three
major sources—transactional data,
machine data, and social data.

Big data analytics is a comprehensive

and systematic analysis of big data,
which organizations implement to
unearth correlations, hidden patterns,
and insights that allow companies to
make appropriate business decisions with
speed and precision.

Big data aids the generation of improved

and accurate data leads that enable
enterprises to:

Reduce operating costs

Increase customer retention

Gain a competitive advantage

Improve their overall business

strategy

2 | www.simplilearn.com
THE CHARACTERISTICS
OF BIG DATA
It is important to discuss the characteristics of Big Data because not all data is Big
Data. So, what type of data constitutes ‘Big Data’? Defined using the 5Vs, Big Data
characteristics include:

Volume:
The amount of data created and collected.

Variability:
Refers to inconsistencies sometimes exhibited by data sets.

Velocity:
Applies to the data production rate.

Veracity:
The knowledge of whether or not the data source is credible.

Variety:
Indicates different data formats, such as sensor data, text data, video
data, or numeric data.

These big data characteristics play a crucial role in quickly unlocking the value
of data via big data analytics.

3 | www.simplilearn.com
APPLICATIONS OF
BIG DATA
This section of the big data handbook will give you a glimpse of how Big Data is
transforming key industries, driving competitiveness and performance.

Retail
Leading online retail platforms are wholeheartedly deploying big data
analytics throughout a customer’s purchase journey, to predict trends,
forecast demands, optimize pricing, and identify customer behavioral
patterns. Big data analytics is helping retailers implement clear
strategies that minimize risk and maximize profit.

Healthcare
Big data is revolutionizing the healthcare industry, especially the way
medical professionals in the past diagnosed and treated diseases. In
recent times, effective analysis and processing of big data by machine
learning algorithms provide significant advantages for the evaluation
and assimilation of complex clinical data, which prevent deaths and
improve the quality of life by enabling healthcare workers to detect
early warning signs and symptoms.

Financial Services and Insurance

The increased ability to analyze and process big data is dramatically
impacting the financial services, banking, and insurance landscape.
In addition to using big data for swift detection of fraudulent
transactions, lowering risks, and supercharging marketing efforts, few
companies are taking the applications to the next levels. Enterprises
such as Aviva and Progressive are taking data collection and analytics
to the next level, offering discounts on insurance premiums to vehicle
owners in exchange for monitoring and studying their activities via in-
car devices or smartphone applications.

4 | www.simplilearn.com
Manufacturing
Thanks to advancements in robotics and automation technologies,
modern-day manufacturers are becoming more and more data-
focused, heavily investing in automated factories that exploit
big data to streamline production and lower operational costs.
Top global manufacturers are also integrating sensors into their
products, capturing big data to provide valuable insights on product
performance and its usage.

Energy
To combat the rising costs of oil extraction and exploration difficulties
because of economic and political turmoil, the energy industry is
turning toward data-driven solutions to increase profitability. Big data
is optimizing every process while cutting down energy waste from
drilling to exploring new reserves, production, and distribution.

Logistics & Transportation

State-of-the-art warehouses use digital cameras to capture stock
level data, which, when fed into ML algorithms, facilitates intelligent
inventory management with prediction capabilities that indicate when
restocking is required.

In the transportation industry, leading transport companies now

promote the collection and analysis of vehicle telematics data, using
big data to optimize routes, driving behavior, and maintenance.

Government
Cities worldwide are undergoing large-scale transformations to
become “smart”, through the use of data collected from various
Internet of Things (IoT) sensors. Governments are leveraging this big
data to ensure good governance via the efficient management of
resources and assets, which increases urban mobility, improves solid
waste management, and facilitates better delivery of public utility
services.

5 | www.simplilearn.com
REAL-LIFE
EXAMPLES
OF BIG DATA
IMPLEMENTATION
Here are some real-life examples of how top brands are using big data insights
to boost data-driven decisions.

Amazon Fresh and Coca-Cola

Whole Foods In 2015, US multinational beverage
corporation Coca-Cola used big
American multinational supermarket
data analytics to develop a data-
chain, Whole Foods, and Amazon
driven customer loyalty program that
Fresh, a subsidiary of e-commerce
significantly helped the company
company Amazon.com, are fantastic
retain its customers.
examples of how big data analytics
promotes innovation and improves
In an interview with ADMA Managing
product development.
Editor Alicia Tan, Director of Data
Strategy and Precision Marketing
Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh
at Coca-Cola, Justin de Graaf said
leverage big data analytics to
the organization was successful in
understand how users buy products
collecting critical “first-party” big
and how sellers engage with
data, which enabled the corporation
suppliers. The business-critical
to strengthen customer engagement,
insights help these organizations
improve retention, and increase
to innovate personalized solutions
the consumption of both new and
continually.
existing products.

6 | www.simplilearn.com
Netflix
CA-based global media services
provider, Netflix, implemented
big data analytics to enhance its
100-million subscribers’ experience,
with targeted advertising and
recommendations based on their
preferences. To achieve this, the
company analyzes massive data
sets to gain insights from what their
subscribers like, watch, and search.
PepsiCo
Food, snack, and beverage
corporation, PepsiCo, Inc., relies
heavily on big data to efficiently
manage its supply chains. The
company uses warehouse and POS
inventory data to predict and reconcile
shipments and manufacturing needs.
Here’s what the Customer Supply
Chain Analyst at PepsiCo says about
the relevance of big data analytics in
its supply chain management.

UOB
Singaporean multinational banking
organization, United Overseas Bank
(UOB), applied big data analytics
to develop a solid risk management
strategy, which allowed UOB to bring
down the processing time for risk
calculation. Previously, it used to take
approximately 18 h, but using big data
analytics, the Bank can now assess its
risk in a few minutes.

7 | www.simplilearn.com
KEY BIG DATA &
ANALYTICS TERMS
YOU SHOULD KNOW
In this section, we present you with some basic Big Data and analytics terms
that you should be familiar with when dealing with this subject.
Descriptive Analytics
It is a preliminary stage of data
processing that serves to interpret
historical data to provide a better
understanding of useful information
about what has happened and, often,
prepare the data for further analysis.
Predictive Analytics
Analytics that involves the processing
of recent and historical data used
to identify future probabilities and
trends.
Behavioral Analytics
The type of analytics that uses
data about people’s behavior to
understand the intent and predict
future actions.
Diagnostic Analytics
This type of analytics helps to
complete root cause analysis,
reviewing past performance to
provide insights on what happened
and why.
Prescriptive Analytics
Prescriptive analytics is essentially
based on predictive analytics, but it
further includes actions and makes
data-driven decisions depending on
the impacts of various actions.
Geospatial Analytics
This type of analytics is used to
analyze data about physical objects
tied to a geographical location.
Examples include GPS, satellite
photography, and historical data.
Anomaly Detection
Also referred to as ‘Outlier
Analysis,’ is a data mining step
that involves identifying items or
events in a dataset that deviate
from its projected pattern or
expected behavior. Anomalies can
indicate exceptions, exclusions, or
contaminants and often deliver vital
and actionable information.
8 | www.simplilearn.com
Anonymization
The act of making data anonymous
by breaking the links between users
in a database and their records in
order to prevent the detection of the
source of the records.
Batch Processing
A technique of processing massive
data volumes where a batch of
transactions is collected over a period
of time. Hadoop is based on batch
processing of data.
Bayes Theorem
This is one of the most important
rules of probability theory used in
data science and analytics.
Classification Analysis
A systematic process for extracting
important and relevant information
about data and assigning it to a
particular group or class.
Clustering Analysis
This is a means of recognizing similar
items and clustering them in order
to spot the differences as well as the
similarities within the data.
Correlation Analysis
This is a technique to determine
a statistical relationship between
variables, often to identify predictive
factors among the variables.
Cluster Computing
The process of computing, which
involves a ‘cluster’ of pooled
resources of multiple servers.
NoSQL
It refers to database management
systems that are designed to handle
large volumes of unstructured data.
Cassandra
This is a distributed and open-source
NoSQL database management
system designed to handle large
volumes of data across distributed
servers. It is managed by The Apache
Software Foundation.
9 | www.simplilearn.com
HOW TO BUILD YOUR
CAREER IN DATA
ANALYTICS
If you are looking to carve your career path in data analysis, there are many data
analytics skills to master and relevant tools to acquaint yourself with. Let’s talk
about some of them.

Programming
R and Python are two common programming languages you should
be familiar with when taking up data analyst roles. While R supports
statistical computing and graphics, Python is a good language for
large projects due to its ease of use. Other useful languages include
SAS, Java, MATLAB, SQL, Tensorflow, Scala, and Julia.

Math and Statistics

When it’s the subject of data, math and statistics are bound to be
on your list. Many statistical skills are necessary to succeed as a data
analyst, including the formation of data sets, a basic knowledge of
mean, median, mode, SD and other variables, advanced knowledge
of linear algebra, and matrices, relational algebra, CAP theorem,
framing data, and series.

Data Processing Platforms

Data analysts often need to use big data processing platforms
like Hadoop and Apache Spark for crunching large datasets. The
knowledge of these frameworks is necessary to gather data from
multiple devices, and scrub, model, and interpret the data sets to
gain more in-depth insight into trends and relationships.

10 | www.simplilearn.com
Visualization
The insights derived from data analysis amount to nothing if they
are not presented clearly, and in a way that’s understood by the
stakeholders. Working knowledge of Tableau, one of the most widely
used data visualization tools, is a great skill to have for a data analyst.

Machine Learning
The heart of any large-scale data analysis lies in automation. Machine
Learning (ML) enables computers to learn and perform tasks without
human intervention. Data analysts should know how to create, apply,
and train the most appropriate models and algorithms to datasets to
find solutions for specific problems.

Apart from these skills, a questioning mind and genuine interest in

working with data, numbers, and technology will take you further in
this field. The ability to work independently and be a team player,
along with a good understanding of visual encoding tools, like
asggplot, matplotlib, d3.js, and seaborne, are prized qualities that
hiring companies look for in aspiring data analysts.

11 | www.simplilearn.com
GET READY TO
LAUNCH YOUR
CAREER IN DATA
ANALYTICS
As businesses race to rapidly deploy big data analytics, the demand for
Database Developers, Data Analysts, Data Scientists, Big Data Engineers,
Database Administrators, and Data Modelers is on the rise.

To land a dream job in this domain, a bachelor’s degree in information

management, mathematics, computer science, or statistics can prove to be a
perfect foundation, but it is not sufficient. A more specialized certification offers
an edge to an aspiring candidate’s resume, showcasing their highly sought-after
data analytics skills.

This big data handbook recommends Simplilearn’s Big Data Hadoop

Certification Training Course, which helps learners like you become industry-
ready. The training course is designed by data science specialists and industry
experts to help you develop a strong portfolio of big data skills, including
Spark SQL, Spark RDD optimization techniques, parallel processing, functional
programming, and real-time data processing, to name a few.

Aligned to Cloudera’s CCA175 exam, the Simplilearn certification course offers

ten hours of self-paced video, 48 h of instructor-led training, and four real-life,
industry-based projects using Big Data Stack, Hive, and Hadoop. Register now
to boost your career opportunities in big data analytics.

Other related courses we offer:

Big Data Hadoop Certification Training Course

MongoDB Certification Training Course

Apache Scala and Spark Certification Training

12 | www.simplilearn.com
INDIA
Simplilearn Solutions Pvt Ltd.
# 53/1 C, Manoj Arcade, 24th Main,
Harlkunte
2nd Sector, HSR Layout
Bangalore - 560102
Call us at: 1800-212-7688

USA
Simplilearn Americas, Inc.
201 Spear Street, Suite 1100,
San Francisco, CA 94105
United States
Phone No: +1-844-532-7688

www.simplilearn.com