The data explosion

We live in a data-driven world that steadily becomes even more data-driven. The innate tendency of humans to impart information, especially in written form, has caused an abundance of data for various languages and domains. Besides people’s willingness to share information, advances in computer connectivity and storage have paved the way for an explosion in the volume of text data. For instance, hundreds of billions of emails are sent daily, and thousands of tweets are posted per second. Frantically, people and businesses are churning out lots of unstructured data with an increased volume, velocity, and variety, but with less veracity. The four Vs are defining properties of big data and shape our digital world. For that reason, they need some attention:

• Volume: Big data is about this volume now reaching unprecedented heights. Digital storage has become so cheap and vast in its capacity that we can practically keep all the digital data we’re...