Chapter 6: The Importance of Data

Data are everywhere. With so many people online, leveraging dozens of different systems and tools, all these interactions create data. Each time you login to a social networking service, it’s logged somewhere, and those logs are then aggregated and analyzed by data scientists to drive future designs on that specific system. With the cost of storage continuing to drop, it makes sense for many organizations to capture and archive user data; even if they don’t have immediate plans to leverage that data. This chapter provides in introduction to data and analytics as it relates to information sciences and technology.