Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking)

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Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking) Book Feature

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Crown (September 9, 2014)
Language: English

ISBN-10: 0385347375
ISBN-13: 978-0385347372
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches

Our personal data has been used to spy on us, hire and fire us, and sell us stuff we don’t need. In Dataclysm, Christian Rudder uses it to show us who we truly are.

For centuries, we’ve relied on polling or small-scale lab experiments to study human behavior. Today, a new approach is possible. As we live more of our lives online, researchers can finally observe us directly, in vast numbers, and without filters. Data scientists have become the new demographers.

In this daring and original book, Rudder explains how Facebook “likes” can predict, with surprising accuracy, a person’s sexual orientation and even intelligence; how attractive women receive exponentially more interview requests; and why you must have haters to be hot. He charts the rise and fall of America’s most reviled word through Google Search and examines the new dynamics of collaborative rage on Twitter. He shows how people express themselves, both privately and publicly. What is the least Asian thing you can say? Do people bathe more in Vermont or New Jersey? What do black women think about Simon & Garfunkel? (Hint: they don’t think about Simon & Garfunkel.) Rudder also traces human migration over time, showing how groups of people move from certain small towns to the same big cities across the globe. And he grapples with the challenge of maintaining privacy in a world where these explorations are possible.

Visually arresting and full of wit and insight, Dataclysm is a new way of seeing ourselves a brilliant alchemy, in which math is made human and numbers become the narrative of our time. Read online Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking) book now.

Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking) Book Reviews

Christian Rudder, one of the founders of the dating service OkCupid and a Harvard trained mathematician, offers us insights from some really big social media data bases. Using analytic techniques to look at overall trends, rather than predictions about individuals, he demonstrates an ethical way to use all of the data that is collected on people who do Google searches, use dating sites, tweet on Twitter, and “friend” people on Facebook.

The results are not always dramatic or interesting, but it is amazing how much can be determined from the on-line behavior of millions of people. He offers, for example, a very credible estimate of the percentage of the population that is gay. He also has an interesting analysis of how people reacted when it became clear that Obama was going to be our first black president.

The only reason I did not give this book five stars is due to the author’s tendency to throw in unnecessary profanity and sarcastic comments. I think he intended these to be humorous, in at least some cases, but I found them distracting interruptions in the flow of an otherwise fine book.

Rudder has a number of really wonderful graphs in the book, showing the trends in the data sets. These are inspired by the work of Edward Tufte see The Visual Display of Quantitative Information for example – and he could not have chosen a better role model. One of the most interesting parts of the book, to this geeky reader, was his final Note on Data which should be the standard that all researchers in this type of analysis. Get online Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking) today.