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ACCA Strategic Professional · Strategic Business Leader · Big data and data analytics

Marlowe Retail combines till transactions, customer emails, social media comments, store CCTV footage and supplier spreadsheets in a single analytics platform. The analytics head explains that the difficulty is that these sources are in structured, semi-structured and unstructured forms. Which characteristic of big data is the main issue?

The main issue is variety. Variety describes data arriving in many different formats and from many sources, such as structured tills, semi-structured spreadsheets and unstructured emails, video and social comments. The difficulty described is integration of differing forms, not quantity, speed or accuracy.

  1. AVelocity, because the data arrives continuously
  2. BVariety, because the data comes in many different formats and sourcesCorrect
  3. CVolume, because there are many records
  4. DVeracity, because some comments may be false

Explanation

The problem stated is the mix of structured, semi-structured and unstructured formats from different sources. That is variety. Volume and velocity are not the issue described, and veracity concerns accuracy, which was not the stated difficulty.

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