Go ahead, be skeptical about big data. The author was—at first. When the term “big data” first came on the scene, bestselling author Tom Davenport (Competing on Analytics, Analytics at Work) thought it was just another example of technology hype. But his research in the years that followed changed his mind. Now, in clear, conversational language, Davenport explains what big data means—and why everyone in business needs to know about it. Big Data at Work covers all the bases: what big data means from a technical, consumer, and management perspective; what its opportunities and costs are; where it can have real business impact; and which aspects of this hot topic have been oversold. This book will help you understand: • Why big data is important to you and your organization • What technology you need to manage it • How big data could change your job, your company, and your industry • How to hire, rent, or develop the kinds of people who make big data work • The key success factors in implementing any big data project • How big data is leading to a new approach to managing analytics With dozens of company examples, including UPS, GE, Amazon, United Healthcare, Citigroup, and many others, this book will help you seize all opportunities—from improving decisions, products, and services to strengthening customer relationships. It will show you how to put big data to work in your own organization so that you too can harness the power of this ever-evolving new resource.

A exploration of the latest trend in technology and the impact it will have on the economy, science, and society at large.

Go ahead, be skeptical about big data. The author was—at first. When the term “big data” first came on the scene, bestselling author Tom Davenport (Competing on Analytics, Analytics at Work) thought it was just another example of technology hype. But his research in the years that followed changed his mind. Now, in clear, conversational language, Davenport explains what big data means—and why everyone in business needs to know about it. Big Data at Work covers all the bases: what big data means from a technical, consumer, and management perspective; what its opportunities and costs are; where it can have real business impact; and which aspects of this hot topic have been oversold. This book will help you understand: • Why big data is important to you and your organization • What technology you need to manage it • How big data could change your job, your company, and your industry • How to hire, rent, or develop the kinds of people who make big data work • The key success factors in implementing any big data project • How big data is leading to a new approach to managing analytics With dozens of company examples, including UPS, GE, Amazon, United Healthcare, Citigroup, and many others, this book will help you seize all opportunities—from improving decisions, products, and services to strengthening customer relationships. It will show you how to put big data to work in your own organization so that you too can harness the power of this ever-evolving new resource.

The amount of data in our world has been exploding, and analyzing large data sets—so called big data—will become a key basis of competition in business. Statisticians and researchers will be updating their analytic approaches, methods and research to meet the demands created by the availability of big data. The goal of this book is to show how advances in data science have the ability to fundamentally influence and improve organizational science and practice. This book is primarily designed for researchers and advanced undergraduate and graduate students in psychology, management and statistics.

Residents in Boston, Massachusetts are automatically reporting potholes and road hazards via their smartphones. Progressive Insurance tracks real-time customer driving patterns and uses that information to offer rates truly commensurate with individual safety. Google accurately predicts local flu outbreaks based upon thousands of user search queries. Amazon provides remarkably insightful, relevant, and timely product recommendations to its hundreds of millions of customers. Quantcast lets companies target precise audiences and key demographics throughout the Web. NASA runs contests via gamification site TopCoder, awarding prizes to those with the most innovative and cost-effective solutions to its problems. Explorys offers penetrating and previously unknown insights into healthcare behavior. How do these organizations and municipalities do it? Technology is certainly a big part, but in each case the answer lies deeper than that. Individuals at these organizations have realized that they don't have to be Nate Silver to reap massive benefits from today's new and emerging types of data. And each of these organizations has embraced Big Data, allowing them to make astute and otherwise impossible observations, actions, and predictions. It's time to start thinking big. In Too Big to Ignore, recognized technology expert and award-winning author Phil Simon explores an unassailably important trend: Big Data, the massive amounts, new types, and multifaceted sources of information streaming at us faster than ever. Never before have we seen data with the volume, velocity, and variety of today. Big Data is no temporary blip of fad. In fact, it is only going to intensify in the coming years, and its ramifications for the future of business are impossible to overstate. Too Big to Ignore explains why Big Data is a big deal. Simon provides commonsense, jargon-free advice for people and organizations looking to understand and leverage Big Data. Rife with case studies, examples, analysis, and quotes from real-world Big Data practitioners, the book is required reading for chief executives, company owners, industry leaders, and business professionals.

In a data-driven world, anything can be data. As the techniques and scale of data analysis advance, the need for a response from rhetoric and composition grows ever more pronounced. It is increasingly possible to examine thousands of documents and peer-review comments, labor-hours, and citation networks in composition courses and beyond. Composition and Big Data brings together a range of scholars, teachers, and administrators already working with big-data methods and datasets to kickstart a collective reckoning with the role that algorithmic and computational approaches can, or should, play in research and teaching in the field. Their work takes place in various contexts, including programmatic assessment, first-year pedagogy, stylistics, and learning transfer across the curriculum. From ethical reflections to database design, from corpus linguistics to quantitative autoethnography, these chapters implement and interpret the drive toward data in diverse ways.

Leverage big data to add value to your business Social media analytics, web-tracking, and other technologies help companies acquire and handle massive amounts of data to better understand their customers, products, competition, and markets. Armed with the insights from big data, companies can improve customer experience and products, add value, and increase return on investment. The tricky part for busy IT professionals and executives is how to get this done, and that's where this practical book comes in. Big Data: Understanding How Data Powers Big Business is a complete how-to guide to leveraging big data to drive business value. Full of practical techniques, real-world examples, and hands-on exercises, this book explores the technologies involved, as well as how to find areas of the organization that can take full advantage of big data. Shows how to decompose current business strategies in order to link big data initiatives to the organization’s value creation processes Explores different value creation processes and models Explains issues surrounding operationalizing big data, including organizational structures, education challenges, and new big data-related roles Provides methodology worksheets and exercises so readers can apply techniques Includes real-world examples from a variety of organizations leveraging big data Big Data: Understanding How Data Powers Big Business is written by one of Big Data's preeminent experts, William Schmarzo. Don't miss his invaluable insights and advice.