by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
Big data does not always mean Big Brother.
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz devotes 300 pages to help us see how the real science of big data is "poised to improve our lives." His contention?
If a violent movie comes to a city, does crime go up or down? If more people are exposed to an ad, do more people use the product? If a baseball team wins when a boy is twenty, will he be more likely to root for them when he's forty? These are all clear questions with clear yes-or-no answers. And in the mountains of honest data, we can find them.
In Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Reveals About Who We Really Are, internet data expert Stephens-Davidowitz "tracks the digital trails that people leave as they make their way across the web." Leaning heavily, but not exclusively, on Google searches, the author is able to deep dive into Big Data.
The microscope showed us there is more to a drop of pond water than we think we see. The telescope show us there is more to the night sky that we think we see. And new, digital date now shows us there is more to human society than we think we see.
Thorough and insightful, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is on the front end of a paradigm shift. Reading this book can help you be more aware of the power of Big Data, thoughtful about how to harness it, and considerate as to its strengths and weaknesses.