Let's talk about data with data
2021-06-04
The future is here... it is there for all to see. Technological growth is exponential, as is the data generated. However, it is estimated that less than 20% of this data is analyzed. In this article we will talk about them, which is why it seems appropriate to define what data is.
90% of the world's data was created in the last two years and is predicted to grow by 40% per year.1
We can say that a data is the representation of a variable (qualitative or quantitative) that indicates an assigned value. Simply put, it is only a value until it is contextualized and analyzed to transform it into information. And information is power, power to make a decision, power to better understand the present, and why not the future. Along with this acquired power comes a great responsibility, something that we will discuss in a future post and which is known as Data Ethics.
Every day, we create approximately 2.5 quintillion bytes of data.2
A quintillion contains 30 zeros and as we saw, there are more and more data. Contrary to what one might think, not all of them are stored in tables or spreadsheets (like excel, for example). They are everywhere, hidden in emails, images, audios and videos. The interesting thing is that in order to examine and measure a set of data, it is not always necessary to organize or tabulate them to analyze them in order to obtain results that may be of interest for the objectives of a project.
A widely used classification suggests dividing data types into structured, semi-structured and unstructured. The former are usually text files that are stored in table format, spreadsheets or relational databases. Each of these contains headings for each category, allowing them to be identified. In such tables, each row corresponds to a record, say for example, a customer. And the columns represent attributes of those customers, such as their monthly income, age, date of birth, among others.