Conceptual decision-making of big data should abandon experience and intuition.

The concept of big data: decision-making should abandon experience and intuition.

According to statistics, 90% of the data in human history were produced in the past two years; Today, the data world has increased to 440 billion bytes. If such a huge amount of information is stored in Apple's iPad tablet, the thickness of the superimposed iPad tablet is equivalent to 2/3 of that from the earth to distance to the moon, which may mean that human beings have entered the era of big data.

The invention of the steam engine made coal and oil an important raw material to promote the industrial revolution. Now, the invention and networking of computers will make big data an important raw material to promote the information revolution. In his book Big Data Doctrine, American author Steve Lor explains how big data technology will trigger a new revolution, and tells us: In which areas will big data shine, in which areas do we need to be vigilant, and where will big data take us?

The field where big data shines.

Big data has applications in many fields and industries, and it will also change people's decision-making methods. Big data theorists believe that all decisions should gradually abandon experience and intuition and increase dependence on data analysis.

Let's take a look at the case of mcpherson Company, an American drug sales company. Mcpherson Company has produced a huge amount of data in its business activities, and IBM has used these data to establish a decision-making simulation model for mcpherson Company. With the help of this model, mcpherson company can make more accurate predictions and better decisions. Some drugs handled by mcpherson Company, such as anticancer drugs and special antibiotics, are extremely expensive and the demand is extremely unstable. In the past, mcpherson company stored such drugs in several distribution centers by "guessing" and then adjusted the goods as needed. According to the decision-making simulation model established by IBM, although the cost of air transportation is 10 times that of truck transportation, if all these drugs are stored in the central warehouse in the suburbs of Memphis and then transported to customers by air, the inventory of these expensive drugs will be reduced by12, and the saved costs will be used to pay the high air transportation costs, and the on-time delivery rate of these drugs will be increased from the previous 80% to 99%. Finally, through the application of big data, mcpherson Company reduced the inventory cost by 654.38+0 billion USD, and improved the efficiency by 654.38+03%.

Big data is also promising in the commodity retail industry. Through statistical analysis of big data, Wal-Mart, the world's retail giant, found that male customers often buy a few bottles of beer by the way when buying baby diapers, so it launched a promotional activity of bundling beer and diapers, which effectively increased the sales of beer. In addition, Wal-Mart found that in the area where the hurricane was predicted to pass, consumers bought strawberry jam pies seven times as much as usual, and before the hurricane, the best-selling commodity was beer. As a result, when the hurricane warning came, they had reserved enough strawberry jam pies and beer, which not only fully met the needs of customers, but also achieved good sales performance.

Many cases in "Big Data Doctrine" tell us that now and in the future, computers and software with lower prices and more open and efficient networks will mean that more enterprises will participate in the application of big data to improve efficiency or formulate strategies.

The "black hole" of big data

Of course, while big data brings convenience to people, it also hides a huge "black hole"-security issues. For example, the largest data agency in the United States is Ankecheng Company, headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, which collects data of hundreds of millions of consumers. The company claims that it has collected a lot of information about consumers through official files, shopping data, online browsing habits and other channels, and thus obtained relevant data of most American adults, such as people's age, race, gender, party, holiday expectations and so on. This is unmatched by the US government and other Internet companies. Ankecheng is an excellent supplier of enterprise consumer information, and it has also become one of the most annoying objects of privacy advocates. How to protect people's privacy while maximizing benefits through technology? How to find the right balance point? This is a major issue that needs serious consideration by human beings.

So far, "how can we minimize the risk of privacy?" There is no clear answer yet, but two completely different camps have been formed. A self-proclaimed "enlightened business group" camp believes that data is an asset and the currency of the information economy, so data, like currency, can only create the greatest value if it is freely circulated; They believe that when making rules to protect privacy, the focus should be on "data use" rather than "data collection". However, the camp of "consumers and privacy advocates" is skeptical and opposes protecting privacy only by restricting the use of data.

Alex Puntland is a team leader of the Media Lab at MIT, and is currently conducting research and experiments on privacy projects. He strongly advocates "new data transaction", which contains three basic principles: "You have the right to own your own data, have the right to control the use of these data, and have the right to choose the way you think fit to destroy or publish these data." In 20 14, the big data report of the Obama administration once again called for strengthening the control of consumer data according to the principles put forward by Puntland. At the same time, developing privacy protection tools for data management has also become a major business opportunity.

The author of the book also observes big data from a broader perspective. He profoundly pointed out that the rapidly expanding "data world" like BIGBANG is not only becoming a mirror image of external objective materials, but also increasingly containing the tracking and recording of human behavior and becoming a "big mirror" for human beings to observe and know themselves. With the help of big data, we will see the true face of the world more and more clearly, and we will know human beings more and more clearly.