There is an old story about an experiment involving nine monkeys. Four monkeys are placed in a cage. Every day, a plate of fresh fruit is placed into the cage. As the monkeys reach for the food the keepers come in and beat them. Over the course of a few weeks the monkeys learn not…
Last week, we talked about critical data elements – data elements that help us to achieve our priorities. Given this definition, critical data elements will vary from time to time based on the selection criteria. So what are some approaches that can be used to define critical data elements? A common approach used to categorise…
I was recently involved in a conversation with a master data management implementation team at a large South African company. Like many large businesses, this particular business comprises a group of related businesses – each running semi-autonomously – but with potential synergies across and between group companies. The challenge? To identify how a centralised set…
A short post this week – I am still travelling Bias in decision making can trump data – as discussed in Is Bias the 7th data quality metric – and Is High Cholesterol bad? On the global stage – the analytics that predicted a Hillary Clinton victory in the 2018 US election was, in…
Let’s define data and analytics and how specifically they are interpreted within the business context. Within a business context, many people consider data and information to be one and the same. While one can argue the definition of each, when talked of in conjunction with analytics, data becomes a resource to be interrogated for a…
For three days last week, New York City became the #datacapital of the world. Data leaders and data citizens from 29 countries and every industry gathered for #datacitizens18. What were some key themes? 1.) Is data governance dead? As governance becomes integral to every data oriented scenario – analytics, AI, compliance, privacy and more –…
We are surrounded by huge amount of data. Data is everywhere and is gaining huge importance and relevance in today’s world. There are many firms that are performing tasks of gathering, retrieving and managing data. This requires systems that can help us handle that much amount of data. Machine Learning has helped us in gathering…
As you read this I will be on my way to New York City ahead of next week’s Collibra Data Citizen’s conference This is the third year that the event is being held, and it is rapidly becoming the event of the year for organisations that are serious about their data It is great that…
When I first started posting about big data, very few users existed in South Africa. Today, most last organisations have a Hadoop data lake – in many cases replacing traditional ETL and/or acting as a data archive as well as a feeder to the enterprise data warehouse and, various operational data marts. In a few,…
When people think about the future of business, it’s often in terms of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, or other concepts that even a few years ago would seem like impossible science fiction. But amidst all the glitz and glamour of a hyper-connected world, “the boring stuff” often goes unnoticed. The day-to-day science…
A few weeks back I wrote about the The 6 dimensions of big data quality. These are: Coverage – how well does the data source meet (or fail to meet) the business need? Continuity – How well does the data set cover all expected or needed intervals? Triangulation – How consistent is data when measured form…
The results of Syncsort’s 2018 Big Data Trends survey have been releases and can be accessed as a ebook by following the link. One clear result of the survey, which engaged several hundred IT professionals over multiple industries is that what was unfamiliar technology four years ago is now becoming an integral part of the…
