Big Data and Data Mining

Miriam Shmueli, Verrazano Class of 2019, Completed Major in Business Management

In the Fall of 2018, I took the opportunity to pursue a research project under the supervision of Professor Chandan Acharya. The explosion of technology and the frequent use of the terminology “big data” in my business courses throughout my academic career led me to complete my first research project: A Literature Review on Big Data and Data Mining.

In starting this literature review, big data was an abstract term to me and I was motivated to explore its impact in the field of business. I answer the following questions in this literature review: Why is the use of big data becoming a necessity in business models? Why are big data and its analysis essential to get insights into organizations and its various stakeholders?

This project has enriched my academic career by giving me a sense of the effort that is put into the research that governs our knowledge. In conducting my own research, I have been given a new appreciation for the published work that I read and the functionality of libraries. The use of technology is a common thread that ties my paper together. As this trend of new technology has entered the academic field and allowed students to conduct their research online, the library has become less of a student workspace. In doing this project, I spent many hours in the library looking through books and working with librarians, and grew my appreciation for the library as well. 
I have learned extensively the meaning, strategies, challenges, and affordances of big data, specifically within the field of business. I have distinguished between big data, data mining, and analytics. By examining success and failure stories of the use of big data, I have learned of the importance of creating good strategies to meet specific goals and of remaining transparent with your consumers regarding their privacy. With the introduction of “FAANG” companies came the consistent rise in technology that has transformed the small data we were collecting but utilizing incorrectly, into big data that can be processed and analyzed in minutes to inform decision makers of good business practices. 

If I could develop this further, I would follow up this literature review by conducting empirical research, collecting data on the relationships between companies that use big data and their performance. By collecting primary data like this, it will give further and quantitative support to the argument that big data is becoming a necessity in business.