In What Scale Can We Trust Big Data?

The fact that marketers use big data to help grow the business is credited to marketing itself, especially digital marketing, which provided the access to vast amount of data.

There is no doubt that big data has made a huge difference. Even after using internet for so many years, I'm still amazed at its capability to store so much information. And with the help of analytic tools, we can extract the data that we want. Before the launching of House of Cards, Netflix had already known that it would be a success, because the tons of data in the hand of Netflix just made it so familiar with its users. Now even UN is using big data to help achieve the goals for sustainable development. For example, the use of fingerprint collector helps to track the number of days that girls in South India go to school.

However, I have to say, big data may not be so trustworthy as you think.

First, it can fool you. This limitation lies mostly on the irrelevance of the data. The data you receive is changing every moment. It's not easy to tell how useful it still remains to a certain situation. Should I use the previous data to do prediction? It really depends.

Second, it can conceal something from you. Get back to the South Indian girls. Even if I know the number of days they go to school. How can I know why they can't make school for certain days? That means, big data isn't necessary a good indicator of quality.

Third, it can make you uncomfortable. As an internet user, you are inevitably recorded. Even the data collectors say, “ Well, we don't record your name.” You still feel that someone is stalking, because the information is about you.

Still, in terms of decision making, big data is not everything. The original idea of House of Cards was still from the creative team.

In the end, let's make big data a simple profile.