SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (October 23, 2015) - Developers involved in Big Data indicate that in projects that use machine learning techniques and processes, human input does not end at project deployment, according to Evans Data Corporation's recently released survey of over 529 software developers focusing on Big Data. The Big Data and Advanced Analytics Survey measures and analyzes the attitudes and perceptions, as well as the current and planned activities of developers involved with Big Data.

A majority of the three-quarters of developers that reported working knowledge of Machine Learning processes characterized the degree to which human input is required for applications to perform their essential tasks as necessary at least some of the time. Forty-four percent indicated that their direct intervention is required in applications that use machine learning most or all of the time. Additionally, 47% of developers reported that machine learning software requires human inputs some of the time. Only 2.6% reported that human input where not required at all.

"Applications for artificial intelligence and machine learning may strike people as examples of completely autonomous computing, in which computers learn to process and act on data by themselves. In practice, development for machine learning is rather different from this fantasy. The overwhelming majority of developers involved in machine learning reveal that machine learning still requires a great deal of hands on involvement from programmers," said Evans Data Corporation Director of Research, Michael Rasalan. "A lot of the work in developing Machine Learning applications involves setting up Big Data systems and Hadoop implementations. But even after deployment, many developers will be creating and optimizing algorithms required to analyze massive amounts of data. This process is continuous and requires direct human input and control most of the time."

The Big Data and Analytics survey is a comprehensive survey of software developers actively working with databases and analytics. It covers topics that revolve around the concept of "Big Data" including business cases for analytics, current data warehousing and ingestion solutions, approaches to analyzing and visualizing data, plus much more.

For complete table of contents and sample data pages: See complete Table of Contents here.

Evans Data Corporation provides regularly updated IT industry market intelligence based on in-depth surveys of the global developer population. Evans' syndicated research includes surveys focused on developers in a wide variety of subjects.

Copyright 2015 Evans Data Corporation. All other company names, products and services mentioned in this document are the trademarks and property of their respective owners.

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