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Good information is invaluable for decision-making. With the explosion of computational power and digital data storage technologies, and more recently the huge increase in mobile communications devices, vast quantities of data are becoming available. But these data are unwieldy. Where data was once scarce, hard to gather, and therefore had to be subject to the very careful analytical processes familiar from mathematical statistics and probability theory, now data come in overwhelming quantity (Volume), at high speeds (velocity), and in many different forms (variety). The challenges and opportunities in Big Data arise from the attempt to use data effectively when it is available in massive Volume, at high Velocity, and in great Variety. This book brings together a number of works that explore a range of significant issues related to Big Data. At one end of the range is concern for gathering data, as seen in the chapter on web scraping, to issues in processing data, as seen in the chapter on national statistical institutes, to concerns for using and analysing data, as seen in several chapters related to teaching with Big Data. |
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