Recently, the family and I visited a LEGO store. We were given a pamphlet that contained some interesting numbers.
- More than 4,000,000 million people will play with LEGO bricks this year
- There are an average of 62 LEGO bricks per person on Earth
- 5,000,000,000 (yeah thats 5 billion) hours per year are spent playing with LEGO bricks
- It would take 40,000,000,000 stacked LEGO bricks to reach the moon
- 19,000,000,000 LEGO elements are made each year – that is 36,000 per minute
Now, I would not really call this big data because it is LEGO bricks not data. Here is what LEGO is missing. The ability to track how the LEGO pieces are used. Imagine if all the LEGO bricks had tiny sensors that would let LEGO know when and how 2 bricks were connected. That would be big data. It would be fun to know what pieces are most commonly connected and which ones are never connected. It would also be fun to know how the bricks are connected. Are they commonly stacked straight or staggered? Privacy issues aside, that would be some seriously fun big data!
I would like to add, big data is not sufficient, what you need is advanced analytics. Let start with simple analytics,
What is the average time spend playing lego, categorized by sex, age, geographical area.? What color combination is more attractive impacting more conversion/sales. How to categorize return customer? etc
Let have some advanced analytics: Who are Lego potential buyer? What buyers are looking for? etc.
Have a nice day. 🙂