Week 5: Big Data and Marketing Research

Materials:

• Read “The Numerati” article (hope it is as interesting as it sounds…)
• Read “Big Data and You”
• Read “Demystifying Big Data”
• Read “Advertisers get a Trove of Clues in Smartphone”
• Read “World’s Most Valuable Brands”

I've put a lot of time in over the last week getting caught up on the materials for this class.

"Introduction," in The Numerati, pp. 1-16

I found the “Numerati” article intriguing – and far too familiar. Lately, the national conversation has centered around Federal Government tapping records from wireless carriers, adding just one more piece of data to the already collected and analyzed thousands of other pieces. This article really underscored to me the near futility of maintaining privacy in today’s information age. At least for now, much of the data about individuals is somewhat siloed. The author paints a brief picture of how weaving his Visa and Tivo and Cellular location together paints a pretty clear picture of his last 24 hours. But for now, or at least as far as we are aware, that data cannot easily be stitched together on the average law-abiding individual. If it could, anonymity and privacy would truly become a thing of the past. As Apple and Google both move forward on applications that allow use of your credit cards through their own networks and devices, we're one step closer to unifying identifiable data, a scary proposition for anyone concerned about privacy. 

Big Data Infographic: