Butterfly Effect

The butterfly effect, an idea from chaos theory in mathematics refers to the way a minor event – such as the movement of a butterfly’s wing – can have a major impact on a complex system such as the weather.  Dirty data can have the same impact on a business as the butterfly effect.  Organizations depend on the movement and sharing of data throughout the organization, so the impact of data quality errors is costly and far-reaching.  Such data issues often begin with a tiny mistake in one part of the organization, but the butterfly effect can produce disastrous results, making its way through MIS systems to the data warehouse and other enterprise systems.  When dirty data or low-quality data enters organizational systems, a tiny error such as a spelling mistake can lead to revenue loss, process inefficiency, and failure to comply with industry and government regulations.  

Explain how the following errors can affect an organization:

A cascading spelling mistake

inaccurate customer records

• Incomplete purchasing history
• Inaccurate mailing address
• Duplicate customer numbers for different customers