Your pool of data is like a massive brain containing much more information than the brain in your head could ever hold or manipulate at one time. You might liken it to a super genius, answering questions humans never thought they’d receive answers to. Take for example the experiments of genetics founder Gregor Mendel. Using the methods available in his time, he would have had to plant 3 trillion plants to find a specific genetic sequence that agricultural scientists can find in a lab today using data science.

“Leveraging data science and molecular techniques together, we can identify that plant in the lab from a seed, and we can put that seed in the ground, and it will grow,” according to Seth Dobrin, Ph.D., director of Digital Strategies at Monsanto Co. Monsanto is an agricultural biotechnology company that Dobrin said is using data tools to do things that were computationally impossible years ago. 

More data, more answers

Dobrin added that the more data types you can aggregate together, the more accurately you can answer your customers’ questions. Introducing a new data set to your existing pool can suddenly make an old problem evaporate.

He said that Monsanto bought The Climate Corp. in San Francisco to address what he calls “black gold syndrome” or the problem of predictions failing because of customers’ differing climates. He said that granular data on different climates and growing conditions will help them deliver exactly what they promise to customers wherever they are.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the Apache Spark Maker Community 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE