What’s Big Data All About?

This is a fairly new concept, as a result of which there are a number of experts and researches who have given various definitions of ‘big data’. This term basically refers to huge amounts of structured, semi-structured and raw and unstructured data which can be used in a certain way so as to derive value based information.

In spite of having so many different definitions, it is characterized by just three V’s which are, volume, variety and velocity. Breaking these three V’s down, the first V for volume basically refers to the amount of data and its sources. Now, this data can come from a huge melange of sources like, sales records, results of scientific experiments, or various other sources from which data is extracted through various real-time sensors.

 

Data Science Course

While the velocity of data refers to the speed at which any data can be analysed. While data can come across as either pre-processed or entirely raw before the tools of analytics are used on it. For instance any data analytics project will first take in the query, require human assistance as well as data analytics tools to study the data and then render an answer to the query.

Thus, human assistance in this field is a big pre-requisite. This may be why there has been an increasing demand for individuals who are well versed with the workings of this field.

The researchers from Berkley University found in a study that the world had produced about 1.5 billion gigabytes of information in the year 1999. When this same study was replicated in the year 2003, it was found that the amount had been doubled in just about 3 years. So by that logic, data was already getting bigger since the year 2001 and now it is believed that, the past few years alone, generated about 90% of the world’s data.

The stock markets of USA see about 7 billion shares being traded daily, while one flights from New York to London generates about 10 Terabytes of Data. The virtual world and social media generates the most amount of data through consumer records of online shopping, through e-commerce websites, websites like twitter generating about 400 million tweets daily and about 3 billion likes get generated on Facebook, per day.

With such volumes of data, floating around in the virtual space and cloud around us, there is a pressing need for professionals who excel at turning this data into value based decisions.

These professionals are either known as Data Analysts or Data Scientists and it is their responsibility of extracting the data, structuring it and storing it into servers and studying it so as to derive insights.

These tasks are accomplished by them with the help of various data analytics tools like, R Programming, SAS Programming, Python, Hadoop, and SQL and so on. Although the concept of data analytics is just not about the tools and technology, it is more about the way a person understands all the data and its effect on the market as a whole.

With careers in this field called as the sexiest careers of the 21st century, there is a lot of demand from both the companies as well as individuals. This has basically led to increase in the number of institutes offering tailor made specialization programs.

Imarticus Learning is the forerunner in the industry of data analytics programs, which are extremely compatible with the industry standards and provide assured guidance to the candidates regarding the same.

What Are The Best Data Science Courses At Imarticus?

In the recent time, the data analytics industry has shown a great, unprecedented growth, what with data being generated at a lightning fast speed on a daily basis. Take any statistical report, which deals with the concept of big data and you would be astounded by the rate of which, opportunities are being created for companies, the world over, to harness the power of this data and convert it into valuable insights. When we narrow it down to just India, researchers state that in the next 10 years, there’s bound to be an eight-fold growth and the data analytics industry, is expected to reach $16 billion in worth. This would get India a position amongst the top three analytics markets, on a global level. Although right now, this seems like a faraway reality, mainly due to the vagueness that surrounds this particular sphere. Currently, there is a lack of the right skills, being available for the job, which has the chances of overshooting the demand for data scientists in the near future. The announcement by Harvard Business Review, which called Data Science as the sexiest career of the 21st Century, has led to a major increase amongst the data science aspirants.
Top 4 Analytics Training Institute in IndiaThis has also contributed to Imarticus, being one of the most sought after institutes in the sphere of data science. Recently, Imarticus collaborated with Genpact, which is a leader in designing, transforming and running business process operations, in the capacity of their knowledge partner. This collaboration would be instrumental in furthering the endeavor of Imarticus, to bridge the wide skillgap, which is currently prevalent especially in the Data Analytics Space. Imarticus has also received a number of accolades including the #1 Big Data Training Institute by Silicon India, as well as secured its position as one of the top 4 analytics training institutes in India.
They offer the best courses when it comes to data science, some of their esteemed courses are listed below:

Certificate In Data Science And SAS

CDSS-thumbnail-01This course is one of their, extensive short term courses and has a curriculum, which includes Base SAS and Predictive Analytics, Multivariate Analytics, Optimization and Forecasting using advanced statistical models. The unique feature here is, apart from being entirely industry-endorsed, this program is run by SAS specialists or experienced professionals in the sphere of data analytics. Apart from inculcating features like live case studies and business problems, this program also offers candidates, with an industry endorsed as well as prepares the candidates to crack two more internationally renowned certifications namely, Bases SAS and Predictive Modeling from SAS Institute.

Diploma In Big Data And Analytics

Imarticus ProdegreeThis program strives to provide a methodical understanding of Data Science and Big Data in a unique hands-on learning experience, with the help of data analytics tools like, SAS, Hadoop, Python, Tableau. It also allows the candidate to specialize either in the data analytics tools like Python or R. Apart from this, the highlight of this program is the one month integrated internship, which is followed by placement at India’s leading Analytics firms. This program is painstakingly designed, while keeping in mind the needs of an evolving Analytics industry, which is always on the look out for individuals, that are job ready.

Ruling the Roost With the Facial Recognition Software – Snapchat – II

After the success of our first introduction to Virtual Reality and Mobile applications, we decided to take a further look into how Snapchat became what it is now. The field of data science has really expanded, especially from all the data it now has access to.
Image result for snapchat face recog filterWhen it started, Snapchat was just a basic photo sharing application popular amongst the frequent users of social media. This application soon went on to accomplish great feats in the technology sphere with its path breaking Virtual Reality enhancements, as well as the powerful facial recognition enhancing technology it has developed. You must have noticed there this different face, that can be superimposed on your face, while in the selfie-mode of Snapchat, this very feature is popularly know as ‘lenses’ or in the more common parlance, filters. While all of the social media lovers out there are rejoicing this new, inane way of social networking, very few of us realize that there’s a very advanced and impressive technology behind it.

The facial recognition technology used here is all the result of this Ukrainian start-up called, Looksery; which was recently acquired by Snapchat for as much as 150 millions dollars. Although Snapchat doesn’t seem to be making much noise about the same as they want to maintain their position, by remaining a more light hearted application. At the basic level a computer vision is used, which is based on the patterns that are seen of a human face, so you would see those certain neon or white colored points either under your eyebrows, tip of your nose and such. While the face recognition technology used by Snapchat goes a step ahead, to get that perfect specific setting, so that a dog nose sits exactly on your nose and not on your chin. The firm actually got itself involved into a lot of rigorous research and development, where this system was trained with numerous, manually drawn points on faces, which would help it make the filter look real. After several tries, this system is then able to mask your entire face perfectly, with the help of those points. This Snapchat trend is not just powerful, but also has sparked off trends with websites like Facebook and Google, dabbling in the field of face recognition software as well.
This application has proved to be a path-breaker by introducing this new powerful trend on the IT sector. While Snapchat restricts it to just one or two faces and is used for purely recreational purposes, there are considerable chances of this software being used for tracking people. With the number of lawsuits being filed, there are certain unwanted effects that are coming to the fore, like the recent controversy with Facebook, it is also important to note why this technology is very much needed. There is a lot that can be done with the help of this, from tracking people in pressing situations to getting feedback on the functionality of various services, the options are endless. These developments combines with advanced data analytics tools, can pave a way for all the governments to be synced in with the on goings within the society. If appropriately developed, this software can go on to actually match a face of anyone. Without even knowing the identity of that person. Thus, Snapchat in a way has open up a treasure trove of possibilities with this facial recognition software.
The field of Data Science would be one of the first ones to benefit from this ever increasing phenomenon. As Snapchat is already generating scores of data with their ever popular filters, it can also encourage advanced data analytics processes so as to enhance end customer service. This would add to the ever increasing demand for professionals, proficient in the skills of data anlytics. A lot of institutes have begun to pick up on this trend and are now offering specialized programs. For instance Imarticus Learning is one such institute that offers courses, which meet the current industry demands of data analytics tools like R Programming, SAS Programming, Hadoop and others.
And, yes, Snapchat is currently hiring for Data Scientists.

Analytics as a Coming of Age Field in the Modern Industry

Big Data is defined as data that is too large and too complex for data tools to for data tools to capture, store and analyze. Experts in the data science industry, identify data with the three V’s which are, volume, variety and velocity. For instance, the amount of shares traded on the stock market in the US amount to about 7 billion, the number of tweets on twitter daily amounts to 400 million, the number of likes generated by Facebook on a daily basis is about 3 billion and about 10 terabytes of data is generated in one flight from NY to London; all of these come under the purview of Big Data. Studies and research have stated that in the last two years about 90% of the world’s data has been generated.
While no doubt there is a huge amount of data present in the virtual space all around us, but just this data on its own is not really of any use to us, unless there is someone who can make sense out of it.This is where data analytics comes into play.
Analytics can be defined as the scientific process of transforming data into insight, which aids in making better decisions as well opening up new avenues of opportunities, all for a competitive advantage. Analytics thus branches out into business analytics and data analytics. Business analytics does not really make use of tools and techniques as much as it makes use of valuable insight, that is derived from unstructured data and further on leads to a business strategy. The role business analytics thus is analyzing the performance of the firm in the past and providing insights, as to how a certain firm should go about its future business performance. This is basically achieved through data and statistical models, quantitative analysis and evidence based management. Today, with the rapid generation of large amounts of data mainly for business transactions, availability of advanced data storage sets as well as the availability of advanced tools to analyze the same; has all resulted in the growing need for analytics in the business sphere.
Analytics branch out into three main types namely, prescriptive analytics which basically deal with enabling smart decisions based on data, predictive analytics which deal with predicting the future on the basis of historical patterns and thirdly, descriptive analytics which means basically mining the data to provide business insights. In simple terms the branch of prescriptive analytics would deal with something like the reason behind air fare hikes every year, predictive analytics would deal with how these e-commerce websites hand you discount coupons, which you actually end up using and descriptive analytics would deal with how certain movie websites, recommend just the right movie to users. Data Analytics in the current year has resulted in people using smart and integrated everyday gadgets, advanced gadgets which could enhance the performance of an individual in a work place and the boom that has been caused by the advent of Virtual Reality.

Data Science Course
Thus analytics is soon to become one of the most highly rewarding careers and companies have already begun to demand more and more trained professionals. With the announcement of careers in this field, being considered as the sexiest careers of the 21st century, a lot of people are opting for a career in this field. This has in turn led to a growth in institutes, which excel in offering tailor made courses so as to ensure the generation of the sought after skill set among candidates. Imarticus Learning offer courses in the various tools and technologies of data analytics, while aiming to bridge the gap between academics and industry at the same time.

Virtual Reality in Applications – Snapchat – I

The virtual world so far was considered to be just that, having no direct tangible connections to the real, physical world. This scenario changed radically, with the big data and analytics, and finally now introduction of the concept of Virtual Reality. While the millennials have already been taken by the social media storm, with a majority of them being active across all social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest and others, VR changed the entire game for them.
Virtual Reality glasses have become raging fad today and almost everyone either is obsessed with watching movies or playing games with Virtual Reality Glasses. This trend is skyrocketing by the minute, with Facebook and Google already adopting the virtual reality technology and YouTube starting to make their 360-degree videos, there’s a new player in the market. It’s the picture sharing, social media application Snapchat. This app started off as an exclusive application where the users would share photos with each other while protecting their privacy as well.Image result for snapchat celebrity
This application came with some really note-worthy features like, you could decide the amount of time your pictures would be viewed for, you could also keep track of how many people viewed your stories, if anyone replayed or if someone took a screenshot of your photo. At the peak of its popularity, it was considered to be the best photo-sharing app, because it always offered users with the newest, fun ways to engage over social media. But then, it went on to do something, that totally changed the app-game as it was and resulted in Snapchat leaving behind all the other applications in terms of user engagement.

Image result for snapchat celebrity filters
Their first stride into the Virtual Reality world was with the acquisition of computer vision company, Obvious Engineering’s app Seene. Although at the time when this acquisition happened, it was kept all under wraps, but today you would be aware of its full effect from those much-loved snap chat filters. May it be
doggy ears or pumpkin face, Snapchat launched itself with successful ferocity in the world of augmented reality. This took full effect, when people went absolutely gaga over those 3D selfie lenses and the concept went viral, overnight.
While every other social media application and website, was trying their best to find out ways to connect the physical world, to the virtual one; Snapchat actually was the closest to it. While the virtual reality in this application, currently is only limited to these facial lenses that can be seen in selfie mode. These lenses, although working on 3D technology, are a little different from the actual augmented as there is no use of GPS, locations or any other face recognition features. These are just designs superimposed on your face, earlier these used to be just still designs but they have now evolved into full blown video filters and yes, they definitely are as exciting as they sound.
Image result for snapchat virtual reality glasses
Cut to the future, Snapchat has already launched new virtual reality glasses, which don’t just show you things but let you record small videos and post them on the app. Needless to say there’s some revolutionary technology right there. Apart from this, there was also the recent announcement of them hiring, an acclaimed Hollywood visual effects specialist. These are clearly tell tale signs of something big that definitely going to break the internet, surely millennials cannot wait for it to happen already.
Learn all about what’s Trending and how you can get into the exciting field of Analytics with Imarticus Learning.

Future of Careers in Hadoop

Hadoop is an open source programming software, mainly used in the field of Data Analytics. Information Technology has seen a great boom since the latter half of the 20th century, thus making it one of the most sought after careers, in India. In 2014, an even greater evolution took place in the IT field. There was a huge amount of data in the virtual world, which could be transformed into valuable information for the growth of businesses. Data Science soon became the sexiest field to work in, of the 21st century. The professionals working here were known as Data Scientists and possessed exemplary data analytics skills. There were various tools that a Data Scientist could use like R Programming, SAS Programming, Big Data Hadoop and more.
Among these tools, Hadoop has the highest demand, so much so that the Indian Big Data Hadoop industry is anticipated to grow five-fold in the coming years. Apart from being an open source software, which means that it is free to download and is very accessible, it can deal with almost petabytes of data with much more efficiency and ease, as compared to the other tools. The big data industry has actually been able to pan out into a varied array of fields, all due to Hadoop becoming the go-to data analytics technology.

Data Science Course

The Hindu, which is one of the most eminent newspapers of our country, announced that by the end of the year 2018, India as an individual country will face a shortage of close of 2 lakh data scientists. This makes the year 2016, the right time to make the most out of this opportunity, by acquiring the specific skill set.  The whole business of big data, revolves around extracting, storage, mining and analysing and drawing meaningful insights from all the data generated. This is fast becoming the newest marketing strategy for firms in sectors from health to social networking sites. There have also been predictions as to the fact that, India will soon figure among the most favourite destinations, for outsourcing IT professionals with Hadoop skills. Thus it is evident, that the future of careers in Big Data Hadoop is very bright, with all the states competing to become the major global hub of data analytics.
A career in Hadoop, no doubt is extremely rewarding, as there are ample opportunities to accelerate career growth as well as get those coveted salary packages. Firms have already begun to hire professionals with a speciality in Hadoop skills, thus making it one of the most lucrative career options. The various roles herein include, product managers, Hadoop developers, database administrators, team leaders, software testers, and senior Hadoop developers and so on. Looking at the way things have been progressing so far, it does seem that the upward trend of career opportunities is here to stay. One of the main reasons why Hadoop in particular would see more growth, in terms of opportunities is, the fact that it allows storage of extremely large volumes of structured and unstructured data and their management.
is one such institute offering courses in various data analytics tools, like R Programming, SAS Programming, Big Data Hadoop and more.



Big Data in Risk Management

We all know that over 90% of the world’s data has been generated only in the last two years. Forward-looking organizations, especially e-commerce, have already begun capitalizing on this gold mine. But what does the Big Data revolution mean for financial services, particularly the risk management function?
Risk management faces new demands and challenges. In response to the spate of recent financial crises, regulators are insisting on ever more detailed data and increasingly sophisticated reporting. Banks are now required to conduct regular, comprehensive bottom-up stress tests for a variety of scenarios across all major asset classes.

Put simply, Big Data represents the future of risk management. Why? Big Data technologies can help Risk teams gain better intelligence, drawn from a variety of data sources, in almost real-time. Within the financial services industry, Big Data can enable asset managers, banks and insurance companies to proactively detect potential risks, react much faster and kimore effectively, and make better decisions on the back of insights from thousands of risk variables.
Time is a critical factor in reacting to risks, and if you can react faster to dynamic risk factors, you have a competitive advantage.
Worried about fraud on the trading floor? Rather than manually track staff trading actions, data lakes enable you to retrieve an instant snapshot of an activity, including data from chat room sites, mobile phones, and swipe in/ out records. Suspicious transactions can be identified and stopped as they are happening in real time, before incurring huge fines and damaging your firm’s reputation.
Big Data Analytics has already proved its mettle within e-commerce, and will surely be a game changer for risk professionals. And don’t worry – this new technology is merely one more tool in a risk manager’s arsenal. It does not, and should not, replace the human element — Identifying what’s a signal and what’s merely noise, what you react to and what you ignore is still a judgment you need to make.
Learn more about the applications of Big Data in Risk Management in our next executive development program, which will be conducted on 21st and 22nd September in Mumbai. Click here to learn more.

Big Data Hadoop- The Basics

The digital universe, is filled up to the brim with data, big data as it is popularly known today, is everywhere around us. With its existence comes another aspect, the never ending search for those who can perform magic with this big data, the Data Scientists as they are popularly known.
The explosion of big data took place about half a decade ago and with that, was uncovered a new avenue of possibilities. Earlier, it was the terra byte or the giga byte, which were known to store biggest data; but now the times are changing and new terms like petabytes or zetabytes have come up as storage units for Big Data.
It was only recently that firms discovered the value in the enormous amounts of data that was pouring in through their customer base of millions. At the same time another prediction was made, this one hinted at more data being generated in the future and with that, more demand would be made for people who would be able to make sense out of this data. Statistics state that India will face a shortage of around 2 lakh data Data Scientists for its firms.
There are a lot of tools in the market, which assist a Data Scientist in Data Analytics. These tools usually help in extracting data, storing it, analyzing it and then drawing solutions. Data Analytics is soon to become a marketing requisite, because of the treasure of patterns and insights hidden under mountains of data. R Programming, SAS Programming, Python, Big Data Hadoop are some of the major tools used in this industry, of these Big Data Hadoop is said to be the forerunner.
Hadoop is very well known as the ‘next big thing’ in the data analytics world. This tool was developed by Apache in the year 2002. The basic idea to develop this tool was a way to provide a better open source network for data analytics. At the peak of its popularity, no tool was better than Hadoop at managing huge amounts of data sets. This tool could extract, store and move data with a lot of ease. It is basically free to download and is a distributed storage and distributed processing platform for managing huge amounts of data.
With the use of Big Data Analytics on the increase, it is seen that Hadoop will become the default software for a lot of e-commerce giants as well as big names in other industries. It is also noticed that in India itself there are quite a lot of professionals who are trained in Hadoop. If we look at the numbers there are almost the same numbers of professionals trained in Hadoop in India as there are in the Silicon Valley. More and more companies are looking to hire these professionals, thus making Hadoop the most sought after skill on resumes.
Imarticus Learning one of best educational institute in India, which offer certification courses and training programs in Hadoop. Many aspirants today are opting for these courses and getting trained in Hadoop as well as other data analytics tools.

Pokémon Go – Why is it so popular?

Pokémon was originally an animation show by The Pokémon Company and was aired in the year the year 1995. It began as a game on the ‘Gameboy’ and was soon turned into an animated franchise by the combined efforts of Nintendo, Creatures and Game Freak. Since day 1, this show had garnered immense popularity, and at the height of its fame, had scores of teenagers as its viewers.
Recently, Nintendo launched Pokémon Go as a mobile application, thus bringing together a clever marketing ploy, a health benefiting agenda and made optimum use of the nostalgia attached to the franchise.
pokemon-go-office
Pokémon Go is fast becoming the most sought after application today. Here is some fascinating data we have found so far:

  • In U.S.A alone there have been more than 60% of people downloading the app.
  • This proves that more than 3% of Android users in USA are using this application on a daily basis, nearing the usage of Twitter.
  • People have no problem with the data usage of this app, which is believed to be a lot owing to the graphics. Surprisingly this is not the case, as data analytic experts claim it does even use data as much as Google Maps.
  • Pokémon Go has more than 10 million users already and the number is definitely bound to increase!
  • This application has achieved the most amount of data retention, in just weeks of its launch and has clearly stood out at the standard time a user takes to dislike an app; which in this case, is almost negligible.
  • The fact that there are a number of data analytics in terms of the audience targeted, the age groups, the trends and the fact that this app is literally bringing people out of their houses.
  • Pokémon Go seems to have taken over the world with being downloaded in countries where the app hasn’t even been officially released yet. Appkmirror which a secondary site to download the app has had almost 4 million visits since the launch.

If the stats are to be believed, then Pokémon Go certainly seems to be taking over the world. This presents an incredible opportunity to various firms to invest in this application, as well as to generate more sales, through luring customers to their outlets.

Apart from the primary glitches like the server rundowns, people getting hurt, trespassing or disrespecting a solemn site, this application still seems to be going strong.
Data Analytics will play a major role in further development of the app, thus adding more impetus to career prospects of a Data Scientist.
Imarticus Learning is a reputed education institute, providing a host of courses in the renowned field of Data Analytics and the tools used here, like SAS, R programming, Hadoop and others.


Written by Imarticus Team

R or SAS? Most Used Tool in Analytics Industries

With the boom of the digitalization era and the advent of Big Data, firms and companies started taking notice of the amount of data that was created. It is known that, if one could burn all the data onto CD drives and stack them, the pile would reach the moon twice. Easy access to technology has led to the number of users and thereby, the amount of data generated on a daily basis. As this data cannot be stored in traditional storage systems, there are new systems devised specially for it. What we can infer from this is if one wants to interpret this data, they have to possess a certain set of skills. These people with a specific set of skills are popularly known as Data Scientists.
Data Science is the field, where big data is studied, interpreted and analyzed to draw insights and then take relevant business decisions. There are a lot of professionals in the field of data science, who make use of various tools to help them in data analytics. SAS programming, R Programming, Python, Pig and so on are some of the tools used for data analytics. Interestingly enough, a lot more professionals use SAS programming than R.
The reason is some of the fundamental differences between the two, which will be elaborated in this article.
SAS or Statistical Analysis System is a very old programming software which has been used by almost all the professionals including Data Scientists. It has been on the scene for a much longer time than R programming and is the default software in a lot of firms.
Another fundamental difference is that, R programming is open source software while SAS is licensed software. The major reason for R programming getting a lot of popularity is the fact that it can be downloaded and used free of cost, while SAS programming is considerably expensive.
R programming is primarily coding/programming software, where someone with a background in the field of IT works well. Whereas there have been so many people who have been using the SAS software for everything but statistical use. The SAS programming software is more of a graphical user interface, where the coding part is rarely needed.
Being an open source, R Programming also has its downsides, as it does not have any accountability because; it is out there for everyone to change and use as they go. In addition to that, it is not tested at all as there is no central authority providing this software. With being free, comes no support in fixing of any issues as well, which then leads the user to take help of Google for solving the issues.
Contrary to that, as SAS is licensed it provides high level technical support and comes with great accountability. Although it is expensive, it is very reliable as there are a number of timely upgrades to this software. While R programming is a software that is not tested at the same time, SAS is a thoroughly tested programming language.
Although it may seem that there are stark differences in both the programming language tools, it is evident that R programming is of utmost use in research institutes and for people who want to practice learns it. SAS on the other hand, cannot be used just for learning due to its highly expensive nature.
While it may seem that one of the two programming languages is important and the other is not, it is not the case. For a data scientist, it becomes imperative to have knowledge of how to use every tool there is. One can achieve the same either on their own, or by taking a course on any tool.
Imarticus learning is an institute that offers both short term and long term courses on data analytics, R programming, SAS programming, Python and more.