Small data

Small data is data that is 'small' enough for human comprehension. It is data in a volume and format that makes it accessible, informative and actionable. Small data is data that is 'small' enough for human comprehension. It is data in a volume and format that makes it accessible, informative and actionable. The term 'big data' is about machines and 'small data' is about people. This is to say that eyewitness observations or five pieces of related data could be small data. Small data is what we used to think of as data. The only way to comprehend Big data is to reduce the data into small, visually-appealing objects representing various aspects of large data sets (such ashistogram, charts, and scatter plots). Big Data is all about finding correlations, but Small Data is all about finding the causation, the reason why. A formal definition of small data has been proposed by Allen Bonde, former vice-president of Innovation at Actuate - now part of OpenText: 'Small data connects people with timely, meaningful insights (derived from big data and/or “local” sources), organized and packaged – often visually – to be accessible, understandable, and actionable for everyday tasks.'