Welcome to this book on "How to tell a Story from Big Data". It is a beginners guide to big data, mining, manipulation, integration, processing, visualisation and interpretation based on actual case studies in implementing Data Management frameworks across diverse organisations.

Big data is a term used collectively for data sets that are voluminous, large and complicated that cannot be processed by traditional databases and applications. Some of the major challenges are the collection, extraction, mining, integration, analysis, sharing, storage, transfer, loading, querying, updating and visualisation of these data sets from multiple streams and formats. An effective and accurate visualisation of big data will lead to a more informed decision which in turn will result in greater operational efficiency, cost reduction, increased revenues and reduction in risk.

Big Data analysis is used to identify business trends, predict accurate supply and demand, prevent diseases, combat crime and growth in revenues. Businessmen, organisations, scientists, hospitals, social media, marketing and governments face difficulties with large data sets in areas including internet search, finance and business trends. This book will give you a basic understanding of how big data works and the process used to get insights from such data.