Big data: are we making a big mistake?
Another conclusion to draw from this article (which I really enjoyed, by the way) is that Big Data has been turned into one of the most abstract buzzwords ever.  You thought "cloud" was bad? "Big Data" is far worse in its specificity.I can't count the number of times I'll be talking to some sales rep and they'll describe how they scan the data within whatever application they're demoing and "suggest" items using "big data techniques".  In almost all cases they're talking about a few thousand or hundred thousand records, tops.I've found that when non-hardcore techies talk about Big Data, what they really mean is "they have some data" vs before, when they had zero data.From the article:"Consultants urge the data-naive to wise up to the potential of big data. A recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute reckoned that the US healthcare system could save $300bn a year – $1,000 per American – through better integration and analysis of the data produced by everything from clinical trials to health insurance transactions to smart running shoes. What these consultants mean is that by having just some data compared to the silo'd data that is the norm in US healthcare, they could save a lot, and they're right.  My previous company had a large data set (20+ million patients) and we'd find millions of dollars of savings opportunities for every hospital we implemented in, but that's because we had the data, not because we were running some kind of non-causual correlation analysis like the article references.  It was just because we could actually run queries on a data set.-----Off Topic - how annoying is it that when you copy & paste from the FT, they preface your copy with the following text?High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/21a6e7d8-b479-11e3-a09a-00144feabd...