Today@Dal

From Thursday's Globe and Mail:

Many large companies – and a lot of smaller ones, too – are using copious amounts of customer information to drive their business decisions. The proponents say that “Big Data” – large, complex data sets that companies can mine for consumer insights – will allow buyers to receive more targeted information and be less inundated with useless messages, and also help companies target sales and provide better customer service. However, issues such as privacy and transparency still remain. As the speed and volume of data collection only appears to be accelerating, what can businesses do to take advantage of this trend, avoid the pitfalls and position themselves competitively? The Globe and Mail asked two of Canada’s leading Big Data experts, Pat Finerty, vice-president, alliances and business development for SAS Canada, and Stan Matwin, director of the Institute for Big Data Analytics at Dalhousie University.

Big Data is everywhere now. Are companies becoming too reliant on what the numbers say?

Stan Matwin: There are two things driving this. We now have a very large data set that wasn’t available before and technologies that actually work with these data sets are more affordable. We can take these data and answer significant questions from the business side, but we’ll also be able to exploit answers to the social questions.

Read the rest of this article online.