Your Devil, or Deity (if you have one), may be in the Small Data

Ignite talk at Ignite Ann Arbor 8, November 17, 2013.

We humans love to talk about data -- at least in the circles in which I walk, mostly related to Information Science, bureaucracies, non-profit industries, people talk about "Big Data" a lot. "Big Data" -- it sounds exciting. We humans shove a lot of metaphorical needles into metaphorical haystacks, after all. I'd like to suggest that it's "small data" (by my definition) that's really exciting -- small data in which real data-driven research questions should initially be identified, asked, and answered, before we get to the powerful possibilities in "Big Data."

Transcript

1. Image: untitled by Horia Varlan, licensed under a CC-BY license
2. DAA data(aaaaa)  
3. “my DNA” by Micahb37 licensed under a CC-BY-SA license
4. Image: untitled by Marius B, licensed under a CC-BY 2.0 license what  is  “big  data”?  
5. • volume  (size)       • velocity  (change  and  growth)       •  variety  (self-­‐explanatory)  
6. image by FlyingSinger, licensed under a CC-BY license
7. image by FlyingSinger, licensed under a CC-BY license
8. what  is  “small  data”?   Image: untitled by dan paluska, licensed under a CC-BY license
9. image by swanksalot, licensed under a CC-BY-SA license
10. image by vrt13, licensed under a CC-BY license
11. image by quinn.anya, licensed under a CC-BY-SA license
12. image from the Open Data Institute, licensed under a CC-BY-SA license
13. “dangerous driving in the rain” by woodlywonderworks licensed under a CC-BY license
14. image by Grand Parc - Bordeaux, France, licensed under a CC-BY license
15. ?  
16. image by vrt13, licensed under a CC-BY license
17. image by JFXie, licensed under a CC-BY license
18. image by artist in doing nothing, licensed under a CC-BY license
19. http://citibikenyc.com/ © CitiBike, Image Fair Use claim
20. licensed under a CC-BY license by Public Domain Photos