What is the difference between data and big data? Where does the big part come in? Many authors who have authored books about this (Harkness, Mayer-Schoenberger and Cukier, 2013) describe it as the ability to deal with the whole population rather than a sample drawn from that population. To term this another way, to deal with a sample size N=all rather than a sample size = n. Big data is all about analysing the population. the population need not be large. For example, in their book Freakonomics, Levitt and Dubner analyze the population of sumo wrestling matches, a not super large population for evidence of cheating. But it is the … Continue reading Big data