A review by jessijoyb
Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us about Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

2.0

This book tries too hard to be Freakonomics. The first two parts are full of random examples of interesting but mostly pointless things that can learned via Google search trends. However, a whole lot of assumptions are made off these bits of data that don't seem to have much basis in factual scientific methods of research. Unprofessional jokes are thrown in randomly. If you need a footnote to explain why a joke was not homophobic maybe you should have just skipped the joke. And any book of less than 300 pages of text should not need to use the same example three times, especially when it's about how the author can't believe women are concerned about the smell of their vagina.

The last section of the book explains the limitations big data holds and is really the most grounded section, the rest being almost hagiography. It would have done a lot to work the third section into the examples of the first two sections. It would have balanced out the praise and also would have done much to explain the flaws present in some of the examples included.

Some cool facts buried in a lot of murky oddness.

Disclaimer: I was given this book in a Goodreads giveaway.