Does Big Data = Big Insight?

1. A
Presenta*on
from
Big
Data
22
February
2013
Does Big Data = Big Insight?
All
copyright
owned
by
The
Future
Place
and
the
presenters
of
the
material
For
more
informa:on
about
NewMR
events
visit
NewMR.org
Colin
Strong
GfK

2. Colin Strong, GfK, UK
Big Data, 22 February 2013
Does Big Data = Big Insight?
Colin Strong
MD Technology GfK UK

3. Colin Strong, GfK, UK
Big Data, 22 February 2013
Big Data’s meteoric rise
• Internet of things growing
availability of Big Data
• Expectations of Big Data high
– twice as likely to substantially
outperform their industry peers
– big data expected to improve
organisational performance by
41% over the next three years
• Should we be sceptical?
• Does Big Data always ‘work’?

4. Colin Strong, GfK, UK
Big Data, 22 February 2013
Big Data Assumptions
• Big Data reflects our inner
lives
• We only need to observe to
understand
• Big Data remains inside the
firewall
• The individual is the only valid
unit of measurement

5. Colin Strong, GfK, UK
Big Data, 22 February 2013
The pitfalls
• John Ioannidis: ‘Most published
research findings are false’
• HBR: ‘There’s an odds-on chance
that someone in your organization is
making a poor decision on the basis
of information that was enormously
expensive to collect’
• Nate Silver: ‘Our predictions may be
more prone to failure in the era of
Big Data’

6. Colin Strong, GfK, UK
Big Data, 22 February 2013
Think like a Bayesian
• Take into account the context
through prior probability
• Consider for level of false positives
• Probabilistic outcomes
• Integrate multiple data sources

7. Colin Strong, GfK, UK
Big Data, 22 February 2013
How to do the numbers:
Prior
probability
Ini:al
es:mate
of
service
being
successful
X
4%
New
informa*on
is
delivered:
Consumer
survey
indicates
50%
consider
service
will
be
success
Y
50%
Probability
of
survey
incorrectly
indica:ng
success
Z
5%
Posterior
probability
Revised
es:mate
of
likelihood
of
success
xy
Xy+z(1-­‐x)
29%

8. Colin Strong, GfK, UK
Big Data, 22 February 2013
A manifesto for Smart Data

9. Colin Strong, GfK, UK
Big Data, 22 February 2013
1: ‘Individual’ case study
 Use digital data to collect
information concerning online
behavior
 Integrate this with survey data to
understand the ‘why’
 Used successfully in purchase
journey analysis

10. Colin Strong, GfK, UK
Big Data, 22 February 2013
2: ‘Segment’ case study
 Conducted segmentation of BT
prospects database
 Overlaid this with database of new
customers
 Integrated with the tracking
studies to model the segmentation
onto survey data
 Created a propensity model to
facilitate targeting

11. Colin Strong, GfK, UK
Big Data, 22 February 2013
3: ‘Social’ case study
 Big Data allows us to start
exploring relationships between
individuals
 Allows us to start exploring
different types of real-life social
networks that have proved
elusive
 Big Data provide us with tools
that help us to understand the
way in which these work
 More generally allows us to build
our understanding of complex
systems

12. Colin Strong, GfK, UK
Big Data, 22 February 2013
4: Cultural analytics
 Analysis of massive cultural data
sets and flows
 Publically accessible data sets
increasingly digitised allowing
much more access and analysis
 Ngram a leading tool, groups
experiementing with images
 Exploring ways in which we can
access flows of images
 GfK Visual Survey of Domestic
Space 12 country, relational
database of 18,000 photos

13. Colin Strong, GfK, UK
Big Data, 22 February 2013
Thank you
Colin Strong
Twitter: @colinstrong
Personal blog: www.colinstrong.net

14. Colin Strong, GfK, UK
Big Data, 22 February 2013
Q & A
Colin
Strong
GfK
Ray
Poynter
Vision
Cri:cal
University