As you may know, many big data technologies are defined as schema on read. What this means is that you can throw whatever you want on the disk and then, when you need the data, you tell the data store what that data means (e.g....
In the distant past (circa 2015), IT was responsible for providing data consumers with data, tools, and development expertise. Today, the landscape is shifting, especially in larger organizations. Nowadays, IT provides some of the data - the certified, clean data. Consuming departments fill the rest...
What is Hashing? Hashing is simply passing some data through a formula that produces a result, called a hash. That hash is usually a string of characters and the hashes generated by a formula are always the same length, regardless of how much data you feed...
Predictive analytics is this super-complex field that only statisticians and data scientists can understand, right? Well, perhaps it takes some training to do it well but it only takes two sentences to understand what it's all about: In predictive analytics we determine the likelihood of something...
Number One in Dataspace’s Data Science Series: What does it mean? If nothing else, the data science industry is good at coming up with new, unique, confusing names and terms. ZooKeeper, MapReduce, Hadoop, Pig, Storm, Mahout MongoDB…the list keeps growing and it’s totally understandable if you...
It’s that time of year again! With budgeting for 2018 at the forefront of your agenda, you may be wondering where to head with your data science efforts. Investments in big data are often expensive, but when planned correctly you can manage costs and also...
If you have huge volumes of data, chances are that you can get value out of analyzing that data. But, would you derive significant value from analyzing it in real time? This is an important question because, while there are benefits to real time analytics,...
If you’re like me, you’re an exceedingly attractive, 50-something data geek with a love for aviation history who’s an amazing ice hockey player. You also spend a lot of lunches eating a sandwich while studying new technologies. This kind of on-the-cheap, self service training helps you keep up...
The Lamest BI Requirement – And it Won’t Go Away! Want a sure path to failure in BI and data warehousing? Don’t solicit requirements from your users. Want a second path? Settle for the requirement, “Just give me everything (JGME) and I’ll figure out how to use...
Assessing BI & DW Systems A decent (and fun!) chunk of our business is assessing organizations’ business intelligence and data warehousing capabilities. In assessments we meet with business executives and IT staff to discuss what the business needs, and will need, from BI. We then contrast that with...