On Collecting Just the Right Data

In the MIT News:  Has come up in two recent client engagements.  What current data and ancillary metadata will be needed to make current and future decisions?   What is the cost of gathering and maintaining that data?  What is the value of that data over time?    " ... developed a new technique that could help with both problems. For a range of common applications in which data is either difficult to collect or too time-consuming to process, the technique can identify the subset of data items that will yield the most reliable predictions. So geologists trying to assess the extent of underground petroleum deposits, or meteorologists trying to forecast the weather, can make do with just a few, targeted measurements, saving time and money. ... "