On the Origin(s) and Development of the Term 'Big Data'

Abstract

I investigate the origins of the now-ubiquitous term ”Big Data," in industry and academics, in computer science and statistics/econometrics. Credit for coining the term must be shared. In particular, John Mashey and others at Silicon Graphics produced highly relevant (unpublished, non-academic) work in the mid-1990s. The first significant academic references (independent of each other and of Silicon Graphics) appear to be Weiss and Indurkhya (1998) in computer science and Diebold (2000) in statistics /econometrics. Douglas Laney of Gartner also produced insightful work (again unpublished and non-academic) slightly later. Big Data the term is now firmly entrenched, Big Data the phenomenon continues unabated, and Big Data the discipline is emerging.

Keywords: Massive data, computing, statistics, econometrics

JEL Classification: C81, C82