I wish the author had included concrete examples of finding edges (and the process of finding them). I wonder if anyone here has an example from their experience?
One way is seeing if the predictions you make repeatedly come true in some domain, especially if they go against the general consensus. Is so, it means you have an edge in that domain - you see things more clearly than others or have original insights. Now think about your current predictions about that domain, and see if you can act on them somehow.
One definition of an edge is knowing something other people don't. You have to be careful not to fool yourself.
She talked about physical reads as an edge and gave two aspects of finding the edge.
a) she put herself in a room with her adversaries, the other poker players, and paid attention to how their behavior correlated with their hands
b) she brought up what she noticed and was discounted by other players.
These are two excellent components of an edge:
1) primary data and repeated experience
2) watching the consensus reject that data
Data scientists go through a stage called EDA, or exploratory data analysis, where they just play around and look at the shape of data. From that, they can begin to form conjectures and dig further to validate or refute their hypothesis. Cate was doing that IRL.
