What’s the cost of Christmas?
Ask any parent and they will tell you a lot! Given the time of year, have a look at this article which looks at the costs of the 12 gifts in the “12 Days of Christmas” song we all know.
Have a great Christmas!
So what is big data?
Big data has been the feature of many articles in professional accounting journals such as CIMA’s Financial Management. But what exactly is big data? Originally it referred to more data than information systems could process. But today we have systems capable of processing and analysing millions of transactions in seconds . So what does it mean now? Well, I think the answer to this question will depend a lot on who you ask. To me big data is still data analytics, with maybe some external or social data sources thrown in., with a defined purpose of adding value or saving resources (such as cash or time). This is of course a very broad understanding of what big data is, as value will not mean the same thing to all organisations.
I read an article on Forbes recently which has a similar approach to big data as that I suggest above. The key point the author notes is not to care too much about defining things like big data, but to remember “who cares”. To quote directly from the article “the goal should be to solve a business problem by using new analytics, not to worry about defining a term. That’s because definitions are a distraction from the simple question of “Does this data contain information that is valuable for my business?”
How low-cost airline reduce costs and change our behaviour
I’m a bit tight on time today, so here is a link to a nice article the Economist which gives some useful insights and summaries of how low cost airlines have reduced costs over time. Enjoy.
The cost of “non-local” food
A while ago, I was asked to write some entries for an Encyclopaedia of Corporate Social Responsibility. I enjoyed this and the research behind the writing. One of the terms I wrote about was Local Food. Without repeating the definition verbatim, local food is basically food grown within a local area. But what exactly is local? Town, region, state, country or what? That’s the hard part.
The image to your right shows some nice juicy strawberries. When I was a kid, we had these as treats from about May to July. And they are a treat, once in season and local. But now I can get strawberries at Christmas – but they taste c**p usually and come from many miles away. This is definitely not local food.
Bringing consumers year round fruit (and other food types) is an expensive and difficult business. An article in the November edition of National Geographic gives some idea. Yes the example is US based, but it has some hard facts. The article follows the 3,200 mile journey of strawberries from California to Washington DC. The berries are grown on large-scale farms and over 500 trucks a day can be involved on just one farm. The retail value of each truckload is $90,000, and fuel for each truck costs $2,700. Total journey time is 80 hours, for which a driver must be paid etc, and think about the wear and tear of the truck. This is hardly a local food example I would argue, and it easy to see the money involved. And I’m not even starting on the true cost, which includes costs of large-scale farming (pesticide run-off for example) and CO2 emissions.
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