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662 reviews for:
Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are
Steven Pinker, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
3.82 AVERAGE
662 reviews for:
Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are
Steven Pinker, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
3.82 AVERAGE
Interesting insights using a variety of data sources but it is not as thorough as I would like. It tries very hard to be like Freakanomics but it falls considerably short.
Still a fun read and the author has a unique and enjoyable writing style. I look forward to his future works.
Still a fun read and the author has a unique and enjoyable writing style. I look forward to his future works.
Engaging read but some of the conclusions are overblown and the methodology questionable
An interesting read for anyone working in analytics, or marketing.
Everybody Lies caught my interest as a digital marketer. I’ve been fascinated by the preferences revealed in big data ever since I began working in digital marketing in 2013 — so I was hooked as author Seth Stephens-Davidowitz used big data to reveal funny, sad, interesting, and surprising insights about our modern world. The volume of data available in the digital age can be overwhelming. Stephens-Davidowitz helps the reader make sense how big data can be applied to help us learn about the world around us by outlining four key principles of big data: 1. It reveals an honesty often unavailable in surveys 2. It offers scale at low cost 3. The scale allows you to zoom in to smaller groups in new ways and 4. It provides new types of data. The author also outlines the pitfalls of big data like the curse of dimensionality (if you test enough things, one will emerge as a clear “winner” even if there is no meaningful causality), and the dangers of overpowering corporations and governments. Everybody Lies feels a bit like the sequel to Freakonomics, but I enjoyed it much more. Stephens-Davidowitz struck me as a more empathetic and funny writer. I think almost anyone could enjoy this book, but especially those with an interest in marketing or sociology.
Absolutely loved this book. I constantly see how people say one thing but based on the data, they clearly do something different. This book dives deep into that. It has interesting perspectives on why polls are often wrong as well as many other fascinating subjects
This book was a bit tedious to me but only because I’d recently read an almost identical book called Dataclysm. Both of these books referenced numerous of the same studies, and had a LOT in common in the ways of humor, areas covered, and examples used. This book was more specifically focused on google search data, and, I believe the author is a bit closer to the origin of this type of research, so if I had to recommend one to choose, it might be this. Dataclysm was slightly more focused on data related to dating sites, which may appeal more to some readers. All in all this is a great, high level explanation for ANYONE interested about statistics/big data/inference
dark
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
I remember going to Dalhousie University for a brief lecture about big data while attending the Humanities for Young People program. The concept of big data was a world-altering, ground-breaking technological advance that would push the human race forward. That was when I was about fifteen, so around seven years ago. Reading Everybody Lies now was exceptionally informative, while simultaneously stating the obvious. It both asked you to challenge your natural instincts about how the world works, and said that sometimes, according to the data — prejudices are factual. Basically, one of the biggest lessons from this book is to test everything before accepting it as a fact.
Something I liked about this book was that the author acknowledged their own bias, and practiced what they preached by declaring that they were an unreliable narrator. I thought it was all very meta, especially at the end of the final chapter, where Seth stated that according to the data most people don’t finish non-fiction novels, instead taking a few points from the beginning and middle and moving on with their lives. So he ended with something a bit lacklustre, assuring himself that according to the data, nobody was reading that far. I admire the craftiness of this conclusion, considering that one of the biggest points of the book was that big data isn’t entirely accurate and shouldn’t be solely relied upon.
While I found the concept and research behind Everybody Lies significant and informative, I thought it was a touch redundant to continue to repeat similar big data cases. I felt the text was repeating itself at times to make the book longer or to hammer down a point. Also, I couldn’t tell if the author was sex-crazed or if the big data surrounding human Google searches was sex-crazed. According to the book, sex isn’t searched that often in comparison to most searches, and yet the book continued to return to sexuality and pornography. Is Seth a sex-obsessed hermit, an unreliable narrator trying to prove a point, or is this an example of the “Coin 361” rule he speaks of when trying to pinpoint correlations in data? (I don’t remember the exact number of the coin, but it was something close to that.)
Something else I disliked about the book was the very obvious political agenda. When I read non-fiction, I favour those novels that have a clear attempt to stay away from their own biased political views. From the beginning of this book, it was constantly labelling Trump and his voters as racist, and constantly reprimanding Trump. I thought it was interesting how big data pointed to cities that searched the “N word” the most as those cities that also voted for Trump, and I liked how the book doubled back on itself later by mentioning that just because two things are correlated doesn’t always make them true, however the narrative took a consistent negative stand toward multiple political leaders in a way that I felt was unnecessary to the overarching message. (This is coming from someone who generally detests Trump’s whole vibe. I felt the same way about Michelle Obama’s memoir.)
Overall, though, I think Everybody Lies opened my eyes to just how useful big data can be; and simultaneously, how meaningless.
Something I liked about this book was that the author acknowledged their own bias, and practiced what they preached by declaring that they were an unreliable narrator. I thought it was all very meta, especially at the end of the final chapter, where Seth stated that according to the data most people don’t finish non-fiction novels, instead taking a few points from the beginning and middle and moving on with their lives. So he ended with something a bit lacklustre, assuring himself that according to the data, nobody was reading that far. I admire the craftiness of this conclusion, considering that one of the biggest points of the book was that big data isn’t entirely accurate and shouldn’t be solely relied upon.
While I found the concept and research behind Everybody Lies significant and informative, I thought it was a touch redundant to continue to repeat similar big data cases. I felt the text was repeating itself at times to make the book longer or to hammer down a point. Also, I couldn’t tell if the author was sex-crazed or if the big data surrounding human Google searches was sex-crazed. According to the book, sex isn’t searched that often in comparison to most searches, and yet the book continued to return to sexuality and pornography. Is Seth a sex-obsessed hermit, an unreliable narrator trying to prove a point, or is this an example of the “Coin 361” rule he speaks of when trying to pinpoint correlations in data? (I don’t remember the exact number of the coin, but it was something close to that.)
Something else I disliked about the book was the very obvious political agenda. When I read non-fiction, I favour those novels that have a clear attempt to stay away from their own biased political views. From the beginning of this book, it was constantly labelling Trump and his voters as racist, and constantly reprimanding Trump. I thought it was interesting how big data pointed to cities that searched the “N word” the most as those cities that also voted for Trump, and I liked how the book doubled back on itself later by mentioning that just because two things are correlated doesn’t always make them true, however the narrative took a consistent negative stand toward multiple political leaders in a way that I felt was unnecessary to the overarching message. (This is coming from someone who generally detests Trump’s whole vibe. I felt the same way about Michelle Obama’s memoir.)
Overall, though, I think Everybody Lies opened my eyes to just how useful big data can be; and simultaneously, how meaningless.
This is a bit of an antidote to the negativity of the findings presented in the movie The Social Dilemma. It was an easy, fast read that mostly focused on how the data collected from our online presence can give us a more accurate understanding of humans, often in ways that could potentially be helpful to the greater society.
For any scientists mining for big data out there "Too few of you, Big Data tells me, are still reading." You know what this means.
informative
medium-paced
I enjoyed this book. I found many of the topics interesting and surprising.