MapReduce: the ‘Big Data’ idea inside your Android phone

It’s a few years old now, but IBM’s oft-quoted statement that 90% of the world’s data is created in the previous two years is mind-boggling when you think about it. Basically, we’re swimming in a sea of data that’s rising at a breath-taking rate. As PC users, we’re used to the idea of multi-core CPUs and multi-threaded apps. However, when it comes to machine-learning this ‘big data’, new processing ideas are needed. What might surprise you is that some of those ideas have made their way into your Android phone.

“Many machine-learning algorithms, like most ‘decision tree’ and ‘forest’ algorithms, require the data to all fit into a computer’s