Big data is just a name used by people to refer data which has characteristics of all/any of the 3V’s. Though data collection itself isn’t new, the recent technological advances in chip and sensor technology, the Internet, cloud computing, and our ability to store and analyze data that have changed the quantity of data we can collect. Things that have been a part of everyday life for decades — shopping, listening to music, taking pictures, talking on the phone — now happen more and more wholly or in part in the digital realm, and therefore leave a trail of data.

The other big change is in the kind of data we can analyze. It used to be that data fit neatly into tables and spreadsheets, things like sales figures and wholesale prices and the number of customers that came through the door. Now data analysts can also look at “unstructured” data like photos, tweets, emails, voice recordings and sensor data to find patterns.

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