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6 reasons why I love data and analytics

I must confess that big data analysis wasn’t exactly on my radar when I started engineering at IIT Roorkee. In fact, I started out as a paper and pulp technology major. I soon lost interest in my regular classes and started to work on other projects instead. My first...

Is Spark better than Hadoop Map Reduce?

For anyone who gets into the Big Data world, the terms Big Data and Hadoop become synonyms. As they learn the ecosystem along with the tools and their workings, people become more aware about what big data actually means, and what role Hadoop has in the big data...

Big data analytics – Not just a matter of scale

Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action. Peter Drucker It is only when you reflect on your experiences do they translate into learning. And so, having been in the technology space for close to three...

The search for Long Johns in cold New York

It is minus 13 °C in New York City (with the wind chill), and I feel woefully unprepared for the cold. I immediately head to the Uniqlo store on 5th Avenue - to check out their Heattech vests, long johns and socks. They are out of long johns. A sales associate tells...

8 important things to remember while mining data

1. Having a clearly-defined and measurable objective for a project in mind Data mining is often a difficult and time consuming task. Hence, not having a clear idea how to mine the data will severely affect the project’s focus. So having a clear idea of what, how and...

What does a Data Scientist do?

Data Scientists...! We hear about them everywhere around us and there is so much hype around data science, data scientists and the slew of accompanying technologies like Hadoop, Hive, Mahout, Hbase and with keywords like big data, machine learning, information...

Re-Imagining the Store of the Future – Part II

You are in a department store. After waiting in line, you get to the fitting room - and try out the outfit you've picked out. You love it, except…..it’s the wrong size. You now have to change back into your clothes - go out pick the right size, and get back to the...

Re-Imagining the Store of the Future

A couple of months ago, on a trip to the US, I decided to replace my aging MacBook with a MacBook Air. I placed the order online, since I also wanted to soup up the memory and hard disk. While I was at it, I decided to order a “COVER” for the machine. Four days later,...

Big Data Wants to be Your Shopping Buddy

Imagine a nice Friday afternoon walking around your local mall. You walk into your favorite browsing for a new outfit to wear to your friend's party later in the evening. Although you usually shop in-store, sometimes you shop online, as many people all over the world...

Relational Vs Non-Relational databases – Part 1

In this post, we have seen some of the Big data technologies that are used to store and analyse data. For the past few years NoSQL or Non-relational database tools have gained much popular in terms of storing huge amount of data and scaling them easily. There are...

Crayon's Business Interest Graph: How does it work?

Crayon's SimplerChoices Business Interest Graph (BIG) is a B2B application that identifies a company’s business interests, needs and most relevant market opportunities with external data and events. It combines deep insights on companies, markets and key events to...

How does a Choice Engine overcome the choice problems?

Consider a typical decision – you have just arrived in a new city after a 6 hour flight, it’s 6.30 PM and you want to get a decent vegetarian meal. What do you do?You fire up Google, search for good restaurants in that city, and filter them by type, price, location...

Sales bonus and big data

Leaving behind the old way of sales, companies now have become extremely sophisticated when it comes to helping sales and marketing teams achieve their numbers, and hence the green bucks that inadvertently flow after the quota is achieved, by being creative on Big...

How big data is transforming the world of hospitality

Over the past few years, Big Data has transformed the way the hospitality, travel and tourism sector (HTT) functions. It has lodged a new dimension of customer care in HTT by opening up mind-boggling possibilities -- spurring a 'paradigm shift' from simply viewing...

Government – A Big Data Analytics playground

From citizenship applications, employment status, filing taxes to census recording – all provide massive amounts of data to the Government. A torrent of data in the form of medical files, satellite images, financial records and social media information. To a Big Data...

Big Data Made Visual

“Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons” - Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949. Predictions. Rock solid, one day.  Busted as myth, the next.  But the relentless march of our imagination – and creation - must go on....

The Metaphysics of Big Data: Problem of Induction

How do we, human beings, acquire knowledge? Think for a sec! And don't tell me that it is from text books, TV, internet or newspapers etc!!! Scholars say that there are mainly (debatably) five valid ways (Perception, Inference, Comparison, Verbal Testimony and...

Big Data and the Paradox of Choice

"Autonomy and freedom of choice are critical to our well-being, and choice is critical to freedom and autonomy. Nonetheless, though modern Americans have more choice than any group of people ever has before, and thus, presumably, more freedom and autonomy, we don't...

'Big Data vs Intuition' paradox explained

Every business leader will have a dad's story, I believe, -- a memory or nostalgia how he/she was inspired by the attitudes/thoughts/decisions (sometimes seemingly tough, painful and even stupid) of his/her dad in paving a unique way to success and beyond. Here is one...

Big Data – Hype, Reality, Bill Gates and the Buddha

Today's NYT carried a very good blog post on the six myths surrounding big data. Contrast this with another equally good  article on the premise of Big Data - that "...hidden in all that information lies a hyper-resolution map of the world's behavior in space and...

Big Data can set your mind free…

In my last post, I talked about the paradox of big data, or how data can be misery... In today’s post, I will talk about how that paradox can be resolved... and how data can set you free. Consider these statements by some of the leading writers, academics and...

The Paradox of Big Data… or Why Data is Misery

We've heard it shouted from every rooftop recently– big data is the next big thing, we’re a data-driven company, data underlies everything we do.... So here’s a paradoxical, even heretical thought: Data is misery. Why? Consider this. We are all becoming adherents of...