FEATURE7 October 2019
Paddling the data lake
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Bethan Blakeley shares her guide for not being overwhelmed by your data, and instead analysing it with confidence and purpose.
Most of us, by now, will have heard of the infamous ‘data lake’ – another annoying piece of jargon being thrown about by data scientists, data analysts, business intelligence analysts, data magicians, or whatever other crazy job titles you might have come across.
It seems like we’re always talking in metaphors nowadays, and the data lake is no exception. If you’re dealing with anything vaguely resembling data, you’ll struggle to avoid it. Personally, I don’t like it.
First, it’s completely unhelpful for those who don’t work with data or haven’t come across it before – if you’re one of those people, it essentially means ‘a heck of a lot of data’ (enough to fill a lake, I guess). Second, I think it conveys a desperate image of a huge expanse of water, unable to see land, being stuck, lost and forlorn in a never-ending sea of doubts. This isn’t the ideal picture we want to create of our industry, the ...
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2 Comments
Jenny Shep
4 years ago
Thanks for sharing - this makes a lot of sense. From a doggy paddler!
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thesocializers
4 years ago
I agree about point number one, paddling with a purpose, in general. However, in our business of analyzing conversation data (from public social media posts), I do also encourage a some measure of "wandering", so as to find surprises in what consumers talk about.
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