Big Data Expert: how data produces value

28 January 2020

Among the profiles most requested by the world of work, we find the Big Data Expert, a professional able to analyze a large amount of data to improve a company’s performance.

A complex figure who knows how to extract information from different sources and interpret it to track trends, optimize processes and develop strategies.

But what are the skills required of the Big Data Expert? We talked about it with Matteo Golfarelli, Associate Professor of Information Processing Systems at the University of Bologna and professor of Big Data & Analytics for students of the International Executive MBA of Bologna Business School.

“Big Data Expert is a generic term that presupposes a series of different and complementary variations – says Matteo Golfarelli – since in the first place he is a technologist who masters eco-systems such as Hadoop, Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google, to mention the best technology. However, is not a guarantee of success if you are unable to manage the complexity of the data; for this, you need to be a good data architect. Finally, the volume of data involved requires mastering the analysis techniques, from the most traditional to the most advanced machine learning”.

It is therefore not enough to master the best analysis systems to perfection: “unlike what vendors try to make people believe today – confirms Matteo Golfarelli – it is not the use of the most advanced solution that makes the difference in a real project. The factors in most cases is the ability to understand the data and the application domain, the ability to prepare the data to increase its quality and value and the ability to understand deeply what the data tells us”.

A rigorous methodological approach, a lot of tenacity and an overview are the skills of the big data expert, who has to deal with a field so vast that he cannot demand to be a professional in the sector at 360 degrees: “The best strategy is that of knowing in-depth a set of techniques and technologies and being receptive to studying new ones when the specific problem requires it” concludes Golfarelli who quotes the American writer Darrell Huff, the author of the best-seller “Lying with statistics” in remind us that “if you torture the data enough, they will eventually confess”.



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