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 definition of an edge is knowing something other people don't. You have to be careful not to fool yourself.
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.