Living in a Data Driven World

After taking the time to think more about how data reflects my life and the world around me, I have noticed that we rely on data more than we think we do every day. Data gathering, or collection can play much more of a significant role in some people’s lives than others. The analyzation of data is useful because it can assist one in making decisions and in understanding situations. People will use data in order to make the best decisions possible. Big Data, by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier does a great job explaining and describing the present and future impact that data has on our society.

The book, Big Data, has definitely opened my eyes to recognizing how much of an influence that data has in my personal life basically on a daily basis. The definition in the book of “big data”, is “…the ability of society to harness information in novel ways to produce useful insights or good and services of significant value” (Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier, pg. 2). One area of my personal life that has involved data are my grades in school. My GPA for school is a calculated from all of the grades that I earn from my classes. My GPA from undergrad produced a useful insight for the admissions people at UNCG when they were deciding if I should be admitted to grad school. Another area of my life where data has had an impact is with my apple watch. Everyday my watch tracks my physical activity and how much I move around daily. From that data collected, my apple watch has produced my daily move goal that I try to complete every day. Apple is producing more and more tools and upgrades for their products that heavily rely on data gathering and collection. One of their most recent creations that I look at it on a daily basis involves calculating the amount of screen time for the day or week of how often one uses their phone, and which apps you use the most throughout the day. This feature for Apple products will take your results from the days/weeks and let you know daily if you have been using your phone more than average or if you are below it. Apple is a company that is constantly analyzing and comparing data when they create these new features for their software of their products.

In the book Big Data, there was a reference to the Moneyball where it expressed the significance of the baseball statistics in the movie (Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier , pg. 16). This when I started to think about my workplace, and how much data has an influence in mine and others work around me. The data and statistics play a huge role every single day. I am in my first year as a graduate assistant for the UNCG women’s basketball team. Myself and the rest of the coaching staff look at and analyze data every day while we are in the office. Data is useful for coaches because they are looking at numbers involving player performances of players on their own team, or for an opponent as well. The data containing player performances allow coaches to see what players are doing well, and who needs improvement. Coaches can look at the data such as their team’s shooting percentage, free throw percentage, and assist/turnover ratio to determine strategies for going into games.

Through the multiple examples in the book, big data is transforming our world in a variety of ways that many people may not notice all of the time. After reading about some of the examples in the book, it was overwhelming to see how much data is being collected or gathered in our nation. “Big data refers to things once can do at a large scale that cannot be done at a smaller one, to extract new insights or create new forms of value, in ways that change markets, organization, the relationship between citizens and governments, and more” (Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier, pg. 6). Early on in the book, it talks about the census and how much data is collected for that survey. There is such a large amount of data being collected that it takes years for people to go through and analyze it all. Voting is all about data. Our presidential election that happens every 4 years uses data throughout the election campaign. The data involving who is in the lead for the candidates throughout the race provides the people of the United States with insights.

Lastly, data is having more of an impact throughout our world. “We’re entering a world of constant data-driven predictions where we may not be able to explain the reasons behind our decisions” (Mayer-Schonberger and Cukier, pgs.6-7). Data involving trade, and the stock market are examples how it has influenced our world. This kind of data can be accessed by people from around the world. This goes to show how much importance data has in our world. People make decisions about what stocks they should invest in just from the data that is provided about the companies. There is a lot of work put into providing data like this for people that many of us may not even realize. Decisions are being made based off of information that has been gathered over time. Information about the public health is very useful. Worldwide, people pay attention to data involving that. There were examples in the book that referred to data about the flu, and how that is viewed by people. As you can see, data has had a significant impact in many different areas.