Big Data Explored

By Richard Skeggs, Business Data Development Manager at BLGDRC

The MIT Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems has issued an interesting news release in which it advocates that artificial data can give the same results as real data without compromising privacy. Creating test data is nothing new, but actually making use of synthetic data is.

By Jim Vine, Researcher at BLGDRC

On Monday 20 March the BBC reported on the rates of contract cancellations, bankruptcies and risks of insolvencies among care providers. This inability to provide effective care was also the subject of Monday night’s episode of BBC Panorama and is a growing concern across the UK.

By Ben Foster, Business Analyst at Norwich City Council

Since joining Norwich City Council as a business analyst in November 2015, the momentum behind increased data analytics and the ‘smart councils’ agenda has become more evident. Over the previous 12 months I have attended various events, including Nesta’s ‘Datavores’ agenda, which looks at ways the councils can take advantage of the vast swathes of data they hold.

By Professor Vania Sena, Director of BLGDRC

Recently I was pleased to be invited as a keynote speaker to the SGPE conference at Crieff Hydro, Crieff, Perthshire. The SGPE is a joint collaboration between eight Scottish Universities (Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Heriot-Watt, St Andrews, Stirling and Strathclyde) to provide Masters training to students. The conference is centred on training for both MSc and PhD students and it is an exciting time to bring them altogether.

By Beth Neil, Researcher at BLGDRC

In a recent article on The Conversation, Louise Mc Grath-Lone, a PhD candidate at UCL, published results from a study of children leaving the care system. With colleagues she analysed administrative data from the Department for Education and found that one-third of children re-entered care within five years of leaving it. The study examined the factors which influence the likelihood of a child re-entering the care system.

By Holly Shea, Project Office Administrator at BLGDRC

The assumption of many is that ‘Big Data’ is a fairly new concept. The connotations that surround the word ‘data’ often lead many of us, including myself, to assume that this a modern phenomenon. Growing up in a digital era, I believed that such information and data could not possibly exist without the software or technology to store and harness it.

By Professor Vania Sena, Director of BLGDRC

In September 2016 The Chartered Institute of Marketing published ‘Whose data is it anyway?’ a report into the use of data for marketing purposes. The most striking result to me was that 68% of consumers do not feel comfortable sharing data from their social media profile while 44% of marketers claim to collect data from social media. Also, just 8% of customers understand how and where organisations use their personal data.

By Tom Howard, Project Manager at BLGDRC

There is a lot of hype about big data privacy. Equally there appear to be double standards exhibited by many of those expressing the most concerns. There is widespread concern about what global corporations and governments do with our data and whether our rights are adequately protected, and yet there is little focus on the trend in modern society to wilfully disclose seemingly everything about themselves. This is an example of the privacy paradox.

By Fola Malomo, Research Fellow at BLGDRC

How do we get small and medium sized enterprises to grow? This question has bugged policy-wonks recently. Some people suggest that the growth and survival of start-ups is random. However, recent data on companies in the New Anglia area of Norfolk and Suffolk suggests otherwise. In this blog I’ll give you a preview of the results of a study we have carried out.

By Alexandra Beaumont, Outreach and Engagement Coordinator at BLGDRC

Big Data are commonly underused in businesses, often due to the lack of internal skills required to manipulate the data acquired in the most beneficial way. This is a shame, as businesses can significantly benefit from using Big Data correctly. This blog post is being shared in the run up to Small Business Saturday and explores how small businesses can make the most of their data.

By Richard Skeggs, Business Data Manager at BLGDRC

In my last blog post I referred to the use of a word cloud as a way of making data more visually appealing and ‘fun’. Today I’ll run through the process I use to generate word clouds and hopefully some of you will enjoy creating your own.

By Richard Skeggs, Business Data Manager at BLGDRC

The concept of big data can be daunting; all that data from untold sources in quantities that it’s often not possible to contemplate. Then you have to try to understand the story that the data is trying to tell you. This raises the questions:

What tools do we use to extract the data?

What methods do we use to understand the data?

By Alexandra Beaumont, Outreach and Engagement Coordinator at BLGDRC

“Big Data” is a term which at one point meant absolutely nothing to me and I know that I am not alone. When I mention this phrase in my role I often receive very blank looks, but it’s not surprising that people are unaware of the concept of Big Data as it is not a term which is overly used in everyday life.

By Richard Skeggs, Business Data Manager at BLGDRC

Microsoft Excel is a widely used tool for the analysis of data but there are limitations on the size of data that can be processed and the flexibility of the spreadsheet package. In this blog post I’ll highlight some of the advantages of using the ‘R’ software package against Excel.

The key to R is the code which is a low level functional programming language. The language itself is quick to pick up and understand.