Expand Your Big Data Capabilities With Unstructured Text Analytics by Boris Evelson.
From the post:
Beware of insights! Real danger lurks behind the promise of big data to bring more data to more people faster, better and cheaper. Insights are only as good as how people interpret the information presented to them.
When looking at a stock chart, you can’t even answer the simplest question — “Is the latest stock price move good or bad for my portfolio?” — without understanding the context: Where you are in your investment journey and whether you’re looking to buy or sell.
While structured data can provide some context — like checkboxes indicating your income range, investment experience, investment objectives, and risk tolerance levels — unstructured data sources contain several orders of magnitude more context.
An email exchange with a financial advisor indicating your experience with a particular investment vehicle, news articles about the market segment heavily represented in your portfolio, and social media posts about companies in which you’ve invested or plan to invest can all generate much broader and deeper context to better inform your decision to buy or sell.
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A thumbnail sketch of the complexity of extracting value from unstructured data sources. As such a sketch, there isn’t much detail but perhaps enough to avoid paying $2495 for the full report.