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665 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
665 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
I found this book super fascinating and did not want to stop listening. I think it was the perfect length because I do believe it would have gotten too repetitive and drawn out had he kept going.
Listened to the audiobook. A+ narration.
Listened to the audiobook. A+ narration.
Overall, this was pretty boring. It’s very similar to the Freakonomics and Gladwell style but doesn’t bring new things to light so you don’t feel like you’ve gained much after reading it.
A fascinating study of internet data from Google, Facebook, and Pornhub that kept me entertained throughout. Fair warning, though: there is a good bit of disturbing content about racism, sexism, child abuse, abortion, and other touchy topics that are well-suited to this type of anonymous study.
In the conclusion he calls this a more in-depth version of Freakonomics with the depth provided by the additional data available now. That's a fair summation - if you like data analysis or behavioral economics, or just want to know more about what data science is, this is a good choice. He shows how he can pick up trends from Google searches and what really can't be found with the current data. He shows fascinating and weird little factoids found through this and points to the failures of surveys and self-reported information versus predictive powers of large amounts of data. He sums up very well how the collected information can be useful on a broad scale while not applicable on an individual one with data about searches for suicide and murder.
He makes a strong argument about how natural experiments and greater data availability will strengthen the social sciences, making them as rigorous as the hard sciences. I have to admit this was a slow read - I began it with an ebook version and made very little progress, but I eventually switched to the audiobook and while still slow I did manage to finish it. The tables and charts demonstrating the effectiveness of A/B testing and the results of some of the natural experiments were useful to refer back to.
Overall, I would recommend because the methods and tools he talks about are ubiquitous and becoming more so while not being well understood outside of the technology community. These tools are changing the world around us, not just in academic theory, but in every dealing you have with a large corporate entity. They're using these tools on you so you might as well know what they are.
He makes a strong argument about how natural experiments and greater data availability will strengthen the social sciences, making them as rigorous as the hard sciences. I have to admit this was a slow read - I began it with an ebook version and made very little progress, but I eventually switched to the audiobook and while still slow I did manage to finish it. The tables and charts demonstrating the effectiveness of A/B testing and the results of some of the natural experiments were useful to refer back to.
Overall, I would recommend because the methods and tools he talks about are ubiquitous and becoming more so while not being well understood outside of the technology community. These tools are changing the world around us, not just in academic theory, but in every dealing you have with a large corporate entity. They're using these tools on you so you might as well know what they are.
This book felt like a warm hug from my Economics undergraduate curriculum. The gist is that with the public availability of Google search data, aka the stuff we type into our computers from the privacy of our homes, reveals our true sentiments, unlike surveys or interviews. This books explores that with random examples, which read like Gladwell with statistical backing.
informative
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content
informative
reflective
medium-paced