What is Big Data?
Big Data is not new, it’s simply the
collection and analysis of large amounts of data.
Images, e-mails, GPS data, numbers, archives of all kinds...
we produce lots of data, huge
amounts of data that we need to store.
The problem is that the volume of data is
constantly increasing. In the 1960s, CERN’s data
was already being analysed by a computer,
but it was a very big computer that filled an entire building.
Physicists came to CERN from all over the world
to analyse the data. Time went by.
The data collected continued to grow.
And then we found a way to share the data:
computer networks, in particular the Internet.
With the invention of the World Wide Web at CERN in 1989,
it became very easy to connect computers to each other.
It was a revolution in how we communicate.
In the 2000s, there was so much data that it was no longer
possible to analyse it all at CERN,
even with buildings full of computers.
So the data was distributed all over the world.
The computers at hundreds of different institutes were used
and it was no longer necessary to know where
the data was stored in order to have access to it.
This is called GRID COMPUTING.
Today, Big Data is used by everyone, not just scientists.
For example, we have access to traffic information, weather 
forecasts, flu outbreak predictions – all thanks to
the collection of large amounts of data.
