Mathish

Suppose we want to create a service that allows authors to upload digital books to be stored in “the cloud.” Let’s also suppose that each book weighs in at 5 Mb, on average. We also want to compile some meta-data for each book so we can categorize an author’s library, select an excerpt from each book to serve as a good summary of its topic, and expose an author to others who write about similar subjects. Finally, let’s suppose that we have attracted the attention of scads of prolific authors, perhaps a million authors each having a hundred books to their name. Assuming no duplicates, we’re looking at about 475 Tb of data that need stored and processed.