Getting the data you pay for

A new blog at Nesta, reflecting on Tim Harford’s recent critique of big data and why the recommendation to continue a decennial census is a good thing:

We live in a world of exponentially expanding data. Digitisation and the emerging internet of things have created a world in which our daily activities leave a digital trail. To an organisation or an individual with the right skills, that digital trail becomes data, able to be probed and interrogated for meaning, for correlations and for trends. But in the rush to take advantage of this tsunami of zeroes and ones, it's important to remember that not all data is created equal.