90 Percent of the Big Data We Generate Is an Unstructured Mess

If you don't know much about so-called big data, don't kick yourself. It's hard to wrap your head around the fact that publicly accessible data sets measured in petabytes are out there, and that, when analyzed, they can lead to better human understanding. Or at least to better shopping.

This video tells you a little more about big data.

Data in the Real World: Fast Forward

The infographic below, created by vouchercloud.com, pulled data from all over the web to provide a big snapshot into just how much data is floating around. Data that's too big for humans to parse in standard databases or even using Business Intelligence tools. That's because we're making quintillions of bytes of data every day, pushing 50,000 gigabytes of data on the internet every second.

Why is it so difficult for people to figure out what's going on in all that data? Because 90 percent of it is unstructured stuff, like texts, pictures, tweets, you name it. But all this data can really help narrow in on useful things for humanity—the data from 100,000 health apps can help us quantify our well being, and data can even help us save money. Read the graphic itself for more insights.