Big Data Isn’t a Concept — It’s a Problem to Solve

April 12, 2019

An estimated 5.9 million surveillance cameras keep watch over the United
Kingdom.External link:open_in_new While this may sound intimidating to those
unaware they are being surveilled, this network of closed-circuit TV cameras helped
British authorities piece together the mysterious poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former
Russian intelligence officer turned double agent, and his daughter, Yulia. Super
recognizers, people hired for their above-average ability to recognize faces, sorted
through thousands of hours of video footage and eventually homed in on two
particular suspects. The pair had flown into London’s Gatwick Airport and then
traveled to Salisbury, where they carried out the attack. Through the investigation,
the British police identified and charged the men, Russian intelligence officers, with
attempted murder.
Having a goal, an explicit purpose in collecting and analyzing a dataset, is how scientists can
harness the power of data to solve problems and answer questions.

The public would call this big data in action: a mass of video footage combed by
specially trained police analysts to solve an international crime. The case is a story
of heroes and villains, of cracking a case with an attention to detail worthy of
Sherlock Holmes. But when we reduce our language to the catch-all term big data,
we lose the story. We run the risk of forgetting why we collect data in the first place:
to make our world better through granular details, like an oil painter with a palette
knife.

Knowing the story makes data valuable. Having a goal, an explicit purpose in
collecting and analyzing a dataset, is how scientists can harness the power of data
to solve problems and answer questions, ranging from the query of who poisoned
the Skripals to the lighthearted question of why contemporary summer songs tend to
sound similar.External link:open_in_new
The way we talk about data matters, because it shapes the way we think about data. And
the ways we apply, fund, and support data today will shape the future of our society.
Modern data analytics allows scientists to answer complex questions using highly
specific techniques. However, the public continues to use the generalized term big
data and all of its iterations — big data technology, big data analytics, and big data
tools — to describe their methods.

The way we talk about data matters, because it shapes the way we think about data.
And the ways we apply, fund, and support data today will shape the future of our
society, according to AnnaLee Saxenian, dean of the UC Berkeley School of
Information (I School).

So, why do we still hear the term “big data”? Dean Saxenian offers her insights on
where the term came from and which words we should use instead.

What Is Big Data?

At the beginning of the information age, big data seemed to aptly describe the
technological, cultural, and economic shifts of the early 2000s.

“We started to have access to a whole bunch of new forms of data: data from the
web, data from mobile devices, and, more recently, data from sensor networks,” said
Dean Saxenian. Previously, much of the data that scholars used was based on
surveys and other kinds of administrative information. The numbers were neatly
organized into predetermined categories: for example, the number of employees
who rate their job experiences as satisfactory, or the number of college graduates
who earn more than $50,000 per year.

But this new digital data was different and demonstrated what theorists call the three
V’s: variety, velocity, and volume.
Digitally sourced data has variety in that they are collected with varying degrees of
structure. Data can be heavily unstructured; audio, video, and social media posts
can be considered unstructured data. A company can gather more structured data
on customers’ clicks on its website, or a person can track her heart rate and physical
activity with a wearable device, but data must then be organized in order to be
useful. Multi-structured data can involve combinations of structured and unstructured
data, organized by similar attributes. This new kind of data has velocity , meaning
the numbers come in fast and can be processed very quickly. Today, a company can
real-time process data collected from mobile devices using analytics and data mining
tools. Most compellingly, this data has volume . The latest technologies developed
around the turn of the millennium yielded what Dean Saxenian calls “a firehose of
data.” Around this time, the term big data was born.
“I think [the big data concept] became popular because it did capture the fact that we
felt like we were all of a sudden flooded with data,” Dean Saxenian said. The
magnitude of this moment is difficult to overstate. As a graduate student before the
dawning of the digital age, Dean Saxenian had to go to the library at UC Berkeley to
make photocopies of government census data from hard copy volumes. With
millennium-era technology, anyone can access this same data in seconds — and not
just from one census, but from all of them. “Nobody [at the time] knew how to deal
with it,” Saxenian said.

Today, the concept of big data is not only less compelling, but it’s also potentially
misleading.

But in the past two decades, big data has been cut down to size. Data scientists
have created new tools for collecting, storing, and analyzing these vast amounts of
information. “In some sense, the ‘big’ part has become less compelling,” Saxenian
said.

Moving Away from Big Data

Today, the concept of big data is not only less compelling, but it’s also potentially
misleading. Size is only one of many important aspects of a data set. The term big
data hints at a misconception that high volume means good data and strong insights.

“We want students and consumers of our research to understand that volume isn’t
sufficient to getting good answers,” Saxenian said.

The story we tell about the data — the questions we ask about the numbers and the
way we organize them — matters as much as, if not more than, the size of the set.
Professionals working with data should focus on cleaning the data well, classifying it
correctly, and understanding the causal story.

By thinking systematically about data, from our language to our methods, we can
better position ourselves to use data science for the good of our communities.

The UC Berkeley I School challenges students in the online Master of Information

and Data Science program to approach data with intentionality, beginning with the
way they talk about data. They learn to dig deeper by asking basic questions: Where
does the data come from? How was it collected and was the process ethical? What
kinds of questions can this data set answer, and which can it not?

Learn to approach data with intentionality through the online Master of Information
and Data Science program.

Request Information

This process is part of data science. A more useful shorthand than big data, the
words imply the rigorous approach to analytics and data mining that Dean Saxenian
supports.

“Data science, like social and other sciences, is not just about using the tools,” she
said. “It’s also using the tools in a way that allows you to solve problems and make
sense of data in a systematic way.” Ultimately, a data set is not so much a painting
to be admired but a window to be utilized; scientists use data to see the world and
our society’s problems more clearly.

By thinking systematically about data, from our language to our methods, we can
better position ourselves to use data science for the good of our communities.
“Approaching it more intentionally,” Dean Saxenian concluded, “will give us the best
shot at being good stewards for future generations of the technology.”

Citation for this content: datascience@berkeley, the online Master of Information and
Data Science from UC Berkeley