Big Data's Bottleneck

Information Wrangling Is Big Data's Bottleneck | Technology revolutions come in measured, sometimes foot-dragging steps. The lab science and marketing enthusiasm tend to underestimate the bottlenecks to progress that must be overcome with hard work and practical engineering, Steve Lohr reports.

The field known as "big data" offers a contemporary case study. The catchphrase stands for the modern abundance of digital data from many sources - the web, sensors, smartphones and corporate databases - that can be mined with clever software for discoveries and insights. Its promise is smarter, data-driven decision making in every field. That is why data scientist is the economy's hot new job.

Yet far too much handcrafted work - what data scientists call "data wrangling," "data munging" and "data janitor work" - is still required. Data scientists, according to interviews and expert estimates, spend 50 to 80 percent of their time mired in this more mundane labor of collecting and preparing unruly digital data, before it can be explored for useful nuggets.

"Data wrangling is a huge - and surprisingly so - part of the job," said Monica Rogati, vice president for data science at Jawbone, whose sensor-filled wristband and software track activity, sleep and food consumption, and suggest dietary and health tips based on the numbers. "It's something that is not appreciated by data civilians. At times, it feels like everything we do."Read more »/.../