Over the last few days I’ve heard a few people say things “Big Data is Dead” and “Dashboard is an obsolete term.”
I thought I might look at some data. So here’s a chart of the popularity of some terms related to analytics from 2014 to the present day, using Google Trends (admittedly a very imprecise guide to “reality,” whatever that means in this context).
The bottom line is that every term related to analyzing data seems to be on the rise. Artificial Intelligence just took over from Analytics as the most “interesting” term—regaining the same level of interest it had fourteen years ago.
Analytics looks like it may be dipping down, but it can be hard to tell, because most of the chart concerns Google Analytics. The trend in the term Business Analytics only would be bumping along the bottom of this chart, but when separated, we can see that it’s continued to see steady growth.
Despite the claims, the term Big Data doesn’t seem to be dead (or even noticeably dying), while the “traditional” term Business intelligence seems to be seeing renewed interest. Searches for Dashboards hit a high in 2004 and then declined, but the term seems to be climbing again (but this may be an artifact—e.g. searches for Telsa Dashboards, etc.).
Sadly, there didn’t seem to be any way to get a meaningful result for what’s probably the most-widely used term in the business world: Reporting (most of use of the term refers to journalism).
Note that in order to create the chart, I had to make some choices between “searches” for the term and the term as a “topic” — I invite you to turn to the Google Trends link to play with what that does to the analysis. And please tell me if you find anything interesting!
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2 responses to “Is Big Data Dead? Are Dashboards Obsolete?”
[…] Ironically, this isn’t backed up by the available data, at least according to Google Trends — in fact, all terms associated with any aspect of analytics are on the rise. Personally, I hate semantic or nomenclature wars. They’re a complete waste of time for everybody except the analysts and bloggers that get traffic from writing polemic articles about how somebody else is using a term incorrectly. Instead of arguing over words, everybody should concentrate on making sure that there are no misunderstandings on a particular project, that everybody agrees on what information is to be made available, and why, and how. […]
[…] Ironically, this isn’t backed up by the available data, at least according to Google Trends — in fact, all terms associated with any aspect of analytics are on the rise. Personally, I hate semantic or nomenclature wars. They’re a complete waste of time for everybody except the analysts and bloggers that get traffic from writing polemic articles about how somebody else is using a term incorrectly. Instead of arguing over words, everybody should concentrate on making sure that there are no misunderstandings on a particular project, that everybody agrees on what information is to be made available, and why, and how. What new concepts and buzzwords do you think will appear in Analytics in 2018? […]