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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
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
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
3.82 AVERAGE
Some surprising or not so surprising data, depends how you view human nature. :)
This book was aggressively mediocre. Lots of assumptions made about data, and in between that, just random facts about search trends.
I enjoyed reading this book. I suspect i am a near doppleganger for the author, as many of the books and authors he cites as interesting i have read.
Certainly a great overview of the new arenas of information coming from collected data. I was impressed that he offered a chapter on the dangers and possible misuses of this approach in the book.
One of the criteria I use in the usefulness, or centralness, of a book to my interests is the number of books, articles and authors it inspires me to read. There were only a few new tangents to follow, more were gained from the notes and sources at the end of the book.
I recommend reading.
Certainly a great overview of the new arenas of information coming from collected data. I was impressed that he offered a chapter on the dangers and possible misuses of this approach in the book.
One of the criteria I use in the usefulness, or centralness, of a book to my interests is the number of books, articles and authors it inspires me to read. There were only a few new tangents to follow, more were gained from the notes and sources at the end of the book.
I recommend reading.
This was the most enjoyable book that I read during my recent travels - my poor husband got sick of me sharing the interesting things that I learned (like the odds of being an NBA player based on your height, what percentage of Americans are actually homosexual, what words are used most often on social media by men vs women, etc etc etc). It covers a lot of random subjects and doesn't get very deep, but definitely gets the mind going.
Stephens-Davidowitz is definitely a smart guy. He uses his academic research to try to get the everyday nerd more interested in how data has increasingly defined our lives, in the same vein as Freakonomics or Predictably Irrational. I was expecting this to be more about our social tendency to lie to make ourselves more appealing to others, rather than the other cherry-picking what he found most interesting from his dissertation and professional research. It just feels more like he presents answers to questions that we don't really need answers to in every single chapter. These questions are more related to our personal behaviors - mostly related to sex or pornography, as his prime examples - whereas I would've preferred to see more about the ethical considerations of why humans lie to ourselves and each other. That's more than fine for an easy and light read, one to make you seem more smarter than you actual are when you're sitting on the subway. But I do look forward to when books about social science research, like Charles Wheelan's Naked series, gain more traction in popular media. Still, this was enlightening enough, and will make me look more into using Google Trends for myself. A solid 3 stars.
I found this an interesting view from Seth Stephens-Davidowitz from the frontiers of Big Data social science. Rather like Freakanomics, which the author sites directly as inspiration for his career, we get a bunch of interesting and sometimes alarming facts about people and our institutions.
The thesis is that by looking at datasets that are incidentally collected while we are doing other things (usually online), we are showing our true selves rather than our "curated" selves, which is what shows up in traditional surveys, as well as in our Facebook or Instagram personas. So we can find just how racist different states are in the US by looking at Google searches for things like "(offensive racial epithet) jokes", and this is much more honest than our FB likes, and so on. This seems very plausible, and many of the conclusions the author comes to from these data are challenging, but likely true. a lot of this section is devoted to our sex lives and fantasy lives - again, interesting stuff, but fair warning if you are easily offended!
We can also use big datasets to tease out fine details - exactly which shade of blue will maximize click through in our website? This is now standard stuff, but again the more obscure uses of this A/B testing are everywhere.
Seth also devotes some time to warning us of the pitfalls in this new area, of which there are many!Overall I see this as a report by an early explorer in this field, rather than the last word, but for all that I found enough that surprised me (and alarmed me) to keep going to the end, confounding the author's last paragraph - which I will leave you to read up to!
A solid four stars.
The thesis is that by looking at datasets that are incidentally collected while we are doing other things (usually online), we are showing our true selves rather than our "curated" selves, which is what shows up in traditional surveys, as well as in our Facebook or Instagram personas. So we can find just how racist different states are in the US by looking at Google searches for things like "(offensive racial epithet) jokes", and this is much more honest than our FB likes, and so on. This seems very plausible, and many of the conclusions the author comes to from these data are challenging, but likely true. a lot of this section is devoted to our sex lives and fantasy lives - again, interesting stuff, but fair warning if you are easily offended!
We can also use big datasets to tease out fine details - exactly which shade of blue will maximize click through in our website? This is now standard stuff, but again the more obscure uses of this A/B testing are everywhere.
Seth also devotes some time to warning us of the pitfalls in this new area, of which there are many!Overall I see this as a report by an early explorer in this field, rather than the last word, but for all that I found enough that surprised me (and alarmed me) to keep going to the end, confounding the author's last paragraph - which I will leave you to read up to!
A solid four stars.
Another solid book about data. This book gives an insight to human behaviour in a way that would never have been possible without the internet. It paves the way for social scientists - that's linguists, psychologists, economists, the lot - to start using Big Data to discover what humans are really like. Because humans lie to each other, but not to Google, Facebook, etc.
The first two-thirds of the book are very interesting, indeed. Who knew Google Trends could hold so many secrets about us? Although it doesn't go into too much detail about the how, it gives various examples about what we can conclude from data.
The latter part of the book discusses similar things I read in another book, Naked Statistics (I think).
The first two-thirds of the book are very interesting, indeed. Who knew Google Trends could hold so many secrets about us? Although it doesn't go into too much detail about the how, it gives various examples about what we can conclude from data.
The latter part of the book discusses similar things I read in another book, Naked Statistics (I think).
informative
medium-paced
Ada bagian-bagian yg menarik, seperti tentang kenyataan bahwa jumlah klik, jenis kata yg terinput dalam google, dan 'kejujuran' yang disukai penulis bisa jadi data untuk pihak-pihak tertentu. Bukan barang baru sebenarnya di dunia data digital. Hanya saja, penulis terlalu berputar-putar, tidak fokus. Misal, ingin bahas A, dia pasti menuliskan 'sebentar, saya akan bahas B dulu' dsb.
Kemudian, penelitian tentang penggunaan data internet sendiri dalam buku ini kurang jelas menurut saya. Misal di suatu daerah, masyarakat cenderung menolak X saat menisi survey manual, padahal ditemukan data bahwa masyarakat tersebut mengakses info secara online berkaitan X (yang kemudian diartikan oleh penulis bahwa masyarakat tsb berbohong). Pertanyaannya adalah...apakah data yang ditemukan dari internet berdasarkan lokasi tersebut diakses oleh seluruh masyarakat yang mengikuti survey manual? Apa jaminannya kalau data yang terkumpul di internet berasal dari orang yang berbeda, bukan orang-orang yang sama? Bisakah menentukan siapa saja yang memakai internet/duduk di balik komputer dan gadget di daerah tersebut? Bagaimana kalau orang-orang yang melacak info secara online adalah para tamu/imigran/bukan warga sebenarnya yang menetap lama di daerah itu? Bagaimana melihat kredibilitasnya?
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Kemudian, penelitian tentang penggunaan data internet sendiri dalam buku ini kurang jelas menurut saya. Misal di suatu daerah, masyarakat cenderung menolak X saat menisi survey manual, padahal ditemukan data bahwa masyarakat tersebut mengakses info secara online berkaitan X (yang kemudian diartikan oleh penulis bahwa masyarakat tsb berbohong). Pertanyaannya adalah...apakah data yang ditemukan dari internet berdasarkan lokasi tersebut diakses oleh seluruh masyarakat yang mengikuti survey manual? Apa jaminannya kalau data yang terkumpul di internet berasal dari orang yang berbeda, bukan orang-orang yang sama? Bisakah menentukan siapa saja yang memakai internet/duduk di balik komputer dan gadget di daerah tersebut? Bagaimana kalau orang-orang yang melacak info secara online adalah para tamu/imigran/bukan warga sebenarnya yang menetap lama di daerah itu? Bagaimana melihat kredibilitasnya?
Membaca ini lumayan melelahkan
Data is only as useful as the questions that we ask from it. The author makes an attempt to ask interesting and oftentimes, intriguing questions from the Big Data available from the millions of searches made on Google and social media likes and posts. Do people always act the way they say they will? Or are there any secrets that they won't tell anyone or don't know themselves, but are willing to share it with a search bar on a browser? A wide range of topics such as racial awareness, sexuality, political interests, sports, etc. is touched upon to make it a thought-provoking read.