Big Data Analytics (BDA)
Module-Wise Previous Year Question Classification
Based on the BDA syllabus and the uploaded previous-year papers.
Quick Priority Guide
Priority Topic Module
★★★★★ Flajolet-Martin M4
★★★★★ Girvan-Newman M5
★★★★★ MapReduce Word Count M2
★★★★★ DGIM M4
★★★★★ Data Stream Management System M4
★★★★★ NoSQL Business Drivers M3
★★★★★ Big Data Characteristics M1
★★★★★ Hadoop Ecosystem M1/M2
★★★★ MapReduce execution / Shuffle & Sort / Combiner M2
★★★★ Bloom Filter M3
★★★★ NoSQL Architectural Patterns / CAP M3
★★★★ Collaborative & Content-Based Recommendation M5
★★★★ R Data Frame / subset / data handling M6
Module 1 — Introduction to Big Data and Hadoop
• Big Data characteristics — mention four characteristics and explain in detail (2023 Dec, 2024 May, 2025 May, 2025 Dec).
• Big Data characteristics with respect to social media (2023 Dec, 2025 Dec).
• 3 V's of Big Data and Big Data case studies (2023 Dec).
• Traditional RDBMS vs Hadoop (2023 Dec).
• How Hadoop handles Big Data problems (2024 May).
• Core Hadoop components (2022 Dec).
• Hadoop Ecosystem / components with diagram (2024 Dec, 2025 May, 2025 Dec).
• Big Data / Google MapReduce case study (2022 Dec).
Module 2 — Hadoop HDFS and MapReduce
• HDFS: Why HDFS is suited for large datasets and not small files (2022 Dec).
• NameNode vs DataNode (2023 May).
• Node failure handling in Hadoop (2023 Dec).
• Secondary NameNode as backup — justify (2024 Dec).
• Function of Map Tasks with example (2022 Dec).
• MapReduce Word Count pseudocode and execution (2022 Dec, 2024 May, 2024 Dec, 2025 May, 2025 Dec).
• Matrix multiplication using MapReduce (2023 May, 2023 Dec).
• MapReduce execution pipeline (2023 Dec, 2024 May, 2024 Dec).
• Shuffle & Sort / Reducer phase (2025 May).
• Combiner in MapReduce (2025 Dec).
• Vector-Matrix multiplication using MapReduce (2025 Dec).
• Natural Join and Grouping/Aggregation using MapReduce (2023 May, 2025 May).
• Selection and Projection using MapReduce (2024 May).
Module 3 — NoSQL
• NoSQL business drivers (2023 May, 2024 May, 2024 Dec).
• Key-Value store and benefits (2023 May).
• Graph Store and business application (2024 May).
• NoSQL architectural patterns — Key-Value / Document-oriented etc. (2024 Dec, 2025 May).
• CAP theorem and CAP vs ACID (2024 Dec).
• NoSQL solutions for Big Data problems / business drivers (2023 Dec).
• Google BigTable case study (2025 May, 2025 Dec).
• Google MapReduce / NoSQL case study (2022 Dec).
• Bloom Filter with example (2022 Dec, 2024 May).
• Bloom Filter construction / recall question (2024 Dec, 2025 Dec).
Module 4 — Mining Data Streams
• Flajolet-Martin numerical for estimating distinct elements — repeatedly asked (2022 Dec, 2023 May, 2023 Dec, 2024 May,
2025 May, 2025 Dec).
• DGIM algorithm for counting ones in a stream (2023 Dec, 2024 May).
• DGIM bucket constraints (2023 Dec, 2024 Dec, 2025 May).
• Data Stream Management System architecture with neat sketch (2022 Dec, 2023 May, 2025 May).
• Issues/challenges in data-stream query processing (2023 May).
• Counting distinct elements in a long stream — algorithm/applications (2025 Dec).
Module 5 — Real-Time Big Data Models
• Recommendation based on product properties / Content-Based Recommendation (2022 Dec, 2023 Dec, 2024 Dec).
• Collaborative Filtering with e-commerce example (2023 May, 2024 May).
• Recommendation system and classification algorithm (2025 May).
• TF and IDF for content-based filtering (2025 Dec).
• Pearson correlation for recommendation (2025 Dec).
• Girvan-Newman community detection — repeatedly asked (2022 Dec, 2023 May, 2023 Dec, 2024 May, 2025 May, 2025
Dec).
• Clique Percolation Method (2024 Dec).
Module 6 — Data Analytics with R
• Create/use a data frame and demonstrate output (2023 May, 2023 Dec, 2024 Dec, 2025 May).
• Data frame structure and summary (2023 Dec, 2024 Dec, 2025 May).
• Data subsetting using [ ] and subset() (2022 Dec, 2023 May, 2024 May).
• Operators used to form data subsets in R (2022 Dec, 2023 May, 2024 May).
• Functions for handling/combing datasets (2023 Dec, 2024 Dec, 2025 May).
• Sort vector in ascending/descending order (2022 Dec, 2024 Dec).
• Create numeric vectors / datasets in R (2023 May, 2024 May).
• Data visualization applications / techniques in R (2024 May, 2025 Dec).
Best Study Order for Limited Time
Module 4 → Module 2 → Module 5 → Module 3 → Module 6 → Module 1
Reason: this order prioritizes the topics that recur most often in the uploaded papers, especially Flajolet-Martin,
Girvan-Newman, Word Count, DGIM, and Data Stream Management System.