back to article What kind of Big Data is yours? Is it data bauxite, data aluminium ... or data Dreamliner?

Data is valuable. There, we’ve said it, do you feel better? The question is, has data as an information currency - and an entity in and of itself - become inherently more valuable? Now that we have real time transactional big data analytics to enrich our lives, does this mean that the 1s and 0s inside every binary now somehow …

  1. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Nate Amsden

    good data is valuable

    I'd rather have no data than bad data. Some people think it's better to have SOMETHING (even if it's wrong) than nothing, not me.

    1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

      Re: good data is valuable

      I had deleted my post as it made me look like a pontificating prick, but it's in accordance with what you say so I'll retrieve from the "Withdrawn" bin:

      "Yes, vague words are meaningless

      Data is worth exactly what you can sell it for; much as anything else really. There's no reason to treat it differently. Processing does not intrinsiquely add value to it; it may be useful to discard the valueless bits though. But only if the analysis is done properly; though, the analysis is what has value, and more specifically the _quality_ of the analysis.

      A piece of white stone you find in the ground is virtually valueless; it becomes very valuable once it has been identified as a diamond by an expert; unless said expert is my 5-yo nephew.

      Same for collected email adresses for example (a string with an @ in it). They have not much intrinsic value unless they are verified to be real adresses; ie they have a valid TLD; more importantly, they don't bounce. Even more importantly, they are not one-time discardable adresses (michael.rogers@nsa.gov is more valuable than jdoe@aol.com, presumably). Value increases as the person behind the adress can be shown to be responsive to marketting to that adress (michael.rogers@nsa.gov is unlikely to buy CHEAP C1AL!5; in fact the email will probably not get through the filters and the PA. j.savile@bbc.co.uk may be a more valuable adress in this case -well, not anymore but you get the point). So, the value is not in the data itself, same as it isn't in the ore itself or in this white stone my nephew found in the rocks. The value is in recognizing what you can or cannot do with the data, and then doing it."

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