Timely reminder as we look at the potential of Big Data, Self-service Analytics that data itself is not immortal. It decays, corrupts, morphs, and is often incomplete. Deleted data has a habit of re-sufacing and baddata spreads like a virus
If data is immortal, surely we can just save it, back it up and move on? Why worry about data if it can take such good care of itself? Surely all we need to do is back it up on a regular basis? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Data may be able to replicate itself and survive certain catastrophes, and we might be capable of creating lots of copies for a relatively cheap price. But data cannot check its own validity or keep itself error-free. And the longer you keep a piece of data, the less useful it becomes. The rate of data decay is estimated at about 2 percent per month
http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/data-is-immortal-but-not-immune-to-decay
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