I got a chance to elaborate on "At the Edge, it is Broad Data, not Big Data!" today at Defrag. I will post more details later, but as I was preparing my slides, it occurred to me that one of the best examples of amplifying signals by connecting enough (a broad set) of relatively poor signal to noise ratios is Nate Silver, and what he did at FiveThirtyEight! He took a relatively large number of noisy signals (individual polls) and combined them to correctly predict everything (almost, he got a Senate seat wrong!) in the Nov 6th election.
That's in one meme, the essence of "Broad Data" put to practice. And just before I spoke, Jeff Ma (of 21 fame) opined on "It is data not Big Data" giving his own and Nate Silver's example, and then after I spoke,@TheUpstartCO tweeted that it was a good day for Nate Silver :)
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