[Avg. reading time: 4 minutes]
What is Data?
Data is simply facts and figures.
When processed and contextualized, data becomes information.
Everything is data
What we say
Where we go
What we do
How to measure data?
byte - 1 letter
1 Kilobyte - 1024 B
1 Megabyte - 1024 KB
1 Gigabyte - 1024 MB
1 Terabyte - 1024 GB
(1,099,511,627,776 Bytes)
1 Petabyte - 1024 TB
1 Exabyte - 1024 PB
1 Zettabyte - 1024 EB
1 Yottabyte - 1024 ZB
Examples of Traditional Data
- 🏦 Banking Records
- 🎓 Student Information
- 👩💼 Employee Profiles
- 🧾 Customer Details
- 💰 Sales Transactions
When Data becomes Big Data?
When data expands
- Banking: One bank branch vs. global consolidation (e.g., CitiBank)
- Education: One college vs. nationwide student data (e.g., US News)
- Media: Traditional news vs. user-generated content on Social Media
When data gets granular
- Monitoring CPU/Memory usage every second
- Cell phone location & usage logs
- IoT sensor telemetry (temperature, humidity, etc.)
- Social media posts, reactions, likes
- Live traffic data from vehicles and sensors
These fine-grained data points fuel powerful analytics and real-time insights.
Why Collect So Much Data?
- Storage is cheap and abundant
- Tech has advanced to process massive data efficiently
- Businesses use data to innovate, predict trends, and grow