Word of the Day

: July 20, 2014

big data

noun BIG-DAY-tuh

What It Means

: an accumulation of data that is too large and complex for processing by traditional database management tools

big data in Context

"The age of big data has driven advances in technology that make it possible to collect, store, and transmit nearly infinite amounts of information." - Sean Lahman, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, May 30, 2014

"In other words, how do you use big data about people and things productively and profitably without risking a loss of trust and business patronage from consumers who are beginning to question it?" - Mary Shacklett, TechRepublic.com, June 16, 2014

Did You Know?

"Big data" is a new addition to our language, but exactly how new is not an easy matter to determine. A 1980 paper by Charles Tilly provides an early documented use of "big data," but Tilly wasn't using the word in the exact same way we use it today; rather, he used the phrase "big-data people" to refer to historians engaged in data-rich fields such as cliometrics. Today, "big data" can refer to large data sets or to systems and solutions developed to manage such large accumulations of data, as well as for the branch of computing devoted to this development. Francis X. Diebold, a University of Pennsylvania economist, who has written a paper exploring the origin of big data as a term, a phenomenon, and a field of study, believes the term "probably originated in lunch-table conversations at Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) in the mid 1990s…."