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A revelatory exploration of the hottest trend in technology and the dramatic impact it will have on the economy, science, and society at large. Which paint color is most likely to tell you that a used car is in good shape How can officials identify the most dangerous New York City manholes before they explode And how did Google searches predict the spread of the H1N1 flu outbreakThe key to answering these questions, and many more, is big data. Big data refers to our burgeoning ability to crunch vast collections of information, analyze it instantly, and draw sometimes profoundly surprising conclusions from it. This emerging science can translate myriad phenomenafrom the price of airline tickets to the text of millions of booksinto searchable form, and uses our increasing computing power to unearth epiphanies that we never could have seen before.