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Lost in Big Data, perhaps Small Data could help

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(2017-Nov-19) I don't remember how I actually found this book "Small Data: The Tiny Clues that Uncover Huge Trends". Most likely, it came as one of the numerous suggestions from Amazon when I was purchasing other databases related book. And I don't regret of getting to read this "technology-agnostic" work created by Martin Lindstrom; marketing consultant very often hired by multinational corporations to investigate certain difficulties those companies may experience and potentially helping them to build their brands by performing so-called small data mining. He even calls himself a "forensic investigator of emotional DNA" by conducting many personal interviews with customers trying to understand the decisions those customers make consciously and it most cases unconsciously. Very interesting research work and practicality applied to each of his data investigation pursuits.



Recently, I read this interview "Big Data: Insights Or Illusions?" with Christian Madsbjerg about a use of bias assumptions from big data because of "intellectual laziness and insecurity". Another article "Hadoop Has Failed Us, Tech Experts Say" states that, "It’s (Hadoop) better than a data warehouse in that have all the raw data there, but it’s a lot worse in that it’s so slow.” And in another section, they outline that, "Unless you have a large amount of unstructured data like photos, videos, or sound files that you want to analyze, a relational data warehouse will always outperform a Hadoop-based warehouse".

I really enjoyed reading Martin Lindstrom's "Small Data" book, where along with his intricate data discovery techniques he tried to find a balance between big and small data. Automation of our lives with big data computing and unnoticed sometimes small data points that better descibe who we are. I like this quote from the book, "Big data and small data are partners in a dance, a shared quest for balance".

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