• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Articles
  • News
  • Events
  • Advertize
  • Jobs
  • Courses
  • Contact
  • (0)
  • LoginRegister
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • RSS
      Articles
      News
      Events
      Job Posts
    • Twitter
Datafloq

Datafloq

Data and Technology Insights

  • Categories
    • Big Data
    • Blockchain
    • Cloud
    • Internet Of Things
    • Metaverse
    • Robotics
    • Cybersecurity
    • Startups
    • Strategy
    • Technical
  • Big Data
  • Blockchain
  • Cloud
  • Metaverse
  • Internet Of Things
  • Robotics
  • Cybersecurity
  • Startups
  • Strategy
  • Technical

Bad Data that Changed the Course of History

Arvind Singh / 3 min read.
May 4, 2017
Datafloq AI Score
×

Datafloq AI Score: 84.67

Datafloq enables anyone to contribute articles, but we value high-quality content. This means that we do not accept SEO link building content, spammy articles, clickbait, articles written by bots and especially not misinformation. Therefore, we have developed an AI, built using multiple built open-source and proprietary tools to instantly define whether an article is written by a human or a bot and determine the level of bias, objectivity, whether it is fact-based or not, sentiment and overall quality.

Articles published on Datafloq need to have a minimum AI score of 60% and we provide this graph to give more detailed information on how we rate this article. Please note that this is a work in progress and if you have any suggestions, feel free to contact us.

floq.to/D3DAY

Data drives all the major decisions in the world today. Every business relies on data to make daily strategic decisions. Every decision from attending to customer needs to gaining competitive advantage is made thanks to data.

As individuals we rely on data for even the most basic daily activities including navigation to and from work as well as for communicating with friends and family. But what happens when the data we rely on to make our daily decisions is bad? It can have a drastic impact on our lives whether it’s a small task like choosing where to eat, or deciding whether or not a candidate for a job is qualified to hire. Relying on bad data can also have a drastic impact on your bottom line.

Bad data is Costly

We know that bad data is costly, but just how costly can it be? IBM estimates that bad data costs the US economy roughly $3.1 trillion dollars each year. That’s a huge number. They also found that 1 in 3 business leaders don’t trust the information they use to make decisions. Not only do they not trust the data they are working with, but there is also a high level of uncertainty into whether or not the data is actually accurate. The same study found that roughly 27% of business leaders were unsure of how much of the data they use is accurate. That’s a high level of doubt in reliable data.

A separate research study from Experian Data found that bad data has a direct impact on the bottom line of nearly 90% of all American companies. Their numbers were similar to the report from IBM that showed that US organizations believe on average that 32% of their data is inaccurate. They found that the average loss from bad data accounted for 12% of the company‘s overall revenue. That’s another huge number that directly impacts the bottom line of a company.


Interested in what the future will bring? Download our 2023 Technology Trends eBook for free.

Consent

Yet another report from Gartner found that 27% of the data in the Fortune 1000 companies is considered flawed. They defined flawed data as data that is inaccurate, incomplete or duplicated. Their research also shows that poor quality data leads to high costs, high customer turnover rate and excessive expenses.

What can history teach us about bad data?

While these examples show many modern problems with bad data, dealing with bad or misleading data is not anything new. The collection and distribution of bad data has been around for thousands of years. Bad data has bankrupted major companies, started wars and even caused entire civilizations to disappear. Utopia Inc, has curated a list of examples of when bad data has changed history. A few of the more interesting examples on the list:

  • In 1999, NASA took a $125 million dollar hit when it lost the Mars Orbiter. It turns out that they engineering team responsible for developing the Orbiter used English units of measurement while NASA used the metric system. The problem here is the data was inconsistent making it a rather costly and disastrous mistake.
  • The Enron scandal in 2001 was largely a result of bad data. Enron was once the sixth-largest company in the world. A host of fraudulent data provided to Enron’s shareholders resulted in Enron’s meteoric rise and subsequent crash. An ethical external auditing firm could have prevented this fraud from occurring.
  • The 2016 United States Presidential election was also mired with bad data. National polling data used to predict state-by-state Electoral College votes led to the prediction of a Hillary Clinton landslide, a forecast that lead to many American voters to stay home on Election Day.

How to mitigate the risk of bad data

Breaking bad data habits can be tricky. As noted in the aforementioned post, there can often be internal resistance to making data-driven changes within your organization. The best way to mitigate risk is by identifying and fixing potential data errors before they have a negative impact on your business and your bottom line. It is easy to make mistakes with your data making it essential to take action to protect your data before facing the negative consequences that can occur.

Categories: Big Data, Infographics
Tags: bad data, Big Data, data insights, historical data

About Arvind Singh

Arvind is a serial entrepreneur with experience in building global businesses for the last 20 years. He believes in boot strapping start-ups and has done that successfully twice with no external funding.

Prior to co-founding Utopia in 2003, Arvind was the CEO of Value Communications Corporation (ValuCom), a company he founded in 1996. Under his leadership, ValuCom grew to be one of the most recognized brand names in prepaid telecom in the US. The company was acquired by Rediff.com (NASDAQ: REDF) in 2001.

Arvind began his corporate career in sales & marketing with IDM (an IBM spin-off) in India. He moved to Dubai with Hewlett Packard (Emitac) in 1988 where he managed and developed some of HP's largest customers in the Middle East. After his MBA, Arvind worked at Kraft Foods in the US in various marketing and senior management positions. During his tenure at Kraft, Arvind launched multiple new brands, some winning the highest award for superior achievement from Philip Morris (Kraft's parent company at the time). His responsibilities included strategic planning, setting P&L targets, advertising and business development for several Kraft brands, including a flagship brand with revenues exceeding $1 billion, and marketing spending exceeding $200 million.

Primary Sidebar

E-mail Newsletter

Sign up to receive email updates daily and to hear what's going on with us!

Publish
AN Article
Submit
a press release
List
AN Event
Create
A Job Post
Host your website with Managed WordPress for $1.00/mo with GoDaddy!

Related Articles

The Advantages of IT Staff Augmentation Over Traditional Hiring

May 4, 2023 By Mukesh Ram

The State of Digital Asset Management in 2023

May 3, 2023 By pimcoremkt

Test Data Management – Implementation Challenges and Tools Available

May 1, 2023 By yash.mehta262

Related Jobs

  • Software Engineer | South Yorkshire, GB - February 07, 2023
  • Software Engineer with C# .net Investment House | London, GB - February 07, 2023
  • Senior Java Developer | London, GB - February 07, 2023
  • Software Engineer – Growing Digital Media Company | London, GB - February 07, 2023
  • LBG Returners – Senior Data Analyst | Chester Moor, GB - February 07, 2023
More Jobs

Tags

AI Amazon analysis analytics app application Artificial Intelligence BI Big Data business China Cloud Companies company costs crypto customers Data design development digital environment experience future Google+ government information learning machine learning market mobile Musk news Other public research sales security share social social media software strategy technology twitter

Related Events

  • 6th Middle East Banking AI & Analytics Summit 2023 | Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - May 10, 2023
  • Data Science Salon NYC: AI & Machine Learning in Finance & Technology | The Theater Center - December 7, 2022
  • Big Data LDN 2023 | Olympia London - September 20, 2023
More events

Related Online Courses

  • Oracle Cloud Data Management Foundations Workshop
  • Data Science at Scale
  • Statistics with Python
More courses

Footer


Datafloq is the one-stop source for big data, blockchain and artificial intelligence. We offer information, insights and opportunities to drive innovation with emerging technologies.

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Recent

  • 5 Reasons Why Modern Data Integration Gives You a Competitive Advantage
  • 5 Most Common Database Structures for Small Businesses
  • 6 Ways to Reduce IT Costs Through Observability
  • How is Big Data Analytics Used in Business? These 5 Use Cases Share Valuable Insights
  • How Realistic Are Self-Driving Cars?

Search

Tags

AI Amazon analysis analytics app application Artificial Intelligence BI Big Data business China Cloud Companies company costs crypto customers Data design development digital environment experience future Google+ government information learning machine learning market mobile Musk news Other public research sales security share social social media software strategy technology twitter

Copyright © 2023 Datafloq
HTML Sitemap| Privacy| Terms| Cookies

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • WhatsApp

In order to optimize the website and to continuously improve Datafloq, we use cookies. For more information click here.

Dear visitor,
Thank you for visiting Datafloq. If you find our content interesting, please subscribe to our weekly newsletter:

Did you know that you can publish job posts for free on Datafloq? You can start immediately and find the best candidates for free! Click here to get started.

Not Now Subscribe

Thanks for visiting Datafloq
If you enjoyed our content on emerging technologies, why not subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive the latest news straight into your mailbox?

Subscribe

No thanks

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

Marketing cookies

This website uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages.

Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.

Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!