Jer Thorp is the co-founder of The Office Research, and an Adjunct Professor at New York University's ITP program. From 2010 to 2012, he was the Data Artist in Residence at the New York Times R&D Group.Cascade allows for precise analysis of the structures which underly sharing activity on the web. This first-of-its-kind tool links browsing behavior on a site to sharing activity to construct a detailed picture of how information propagates through the social media space. While initially applied to New York Times stories and information, the tool and its underlying logic may be applied to any publisher or brand interested in understanding how its messages are shared.In information technology, big data is a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools or traditional data processing applications. The challenges include capture, curation, storage, search, sharing, analysis, and visualization.Rick Smolan is an American photographer interested in the power of big data.The New York Times (NYT) is an American daily newspaper, founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. It has won 108 Pulitzer Prizes, more than any other news organization. Its website, nytimes.com, is America's most popular newspaper site, receiving more than 30 million unique visitors per month.Here's a TED blog post about big data.Twitter is an online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as "tweets".