Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are
Written by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
Narrated by Timothy Andrés Pabon
4.5/5
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About this audiobook
Foreword by Steven Pinker
Blending the informed analysis of The Signal and the Noise with the instructive iconoclasm of Think Like a Freak, a fascinating, illuminating, and witty look at what the vast amounts of information now instantly available to us reveals about ourselves and our world—provided we ask the right questions.
By the end of on average day in the early twenty-first century, human beings searching the internet will amass eight trillion gigabytes of data. This staggering amount of information—unprecedented in history—can tell us a great deal about who we are—the fears, desires, and behaviors that drive us, and the conscious and unconscious decisions we make. From the profound to the mundane, we can gain astonishing knowledge about the human psyche that less than twenty years ago, seemed unfathomable.
Everybody Lies offers fascinating, surprising, and sometimes laugh-out-loud insights into everything from economics to ethics to sports to race to sex, gender and more, all drawn from the world of big data. What percentage of white voters didn’t vote for Barack Obama because he’s black? Does where you go to school effect how successful you are in life? Do parents secretly favor boy children over girls? Do violent films affect the crime rate? Can you beat the stock market? How regularly do we lie about our sex lives and who’s more self-conscious about sex, men or women?
Investigating these questions and a host of others, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz offers revelations that can help us understand ourselves and our lives better. Drawing on studies and experiments on how we really live and think, he demonstrates in fascinating and often funny ways the extent to which all the world is indeed a lab. With conclusions ranging from strange-but-true to thought-provoking to disturbing, he explores the power of this digital truth serum and its deeper potential—revealing biases deeply embedded within us, information we can use to change our culture, and the questions we’re afraid to ask that might be essential to our health—both emotional and physical. All of us are touched by big data everyday, and its influence is multiplying. Everybody Lies challenges us to think differently about how we see it and the world.
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz is a contributing op-ed writer for the New York Times, a lecturer at The Wharton School, and a former Google data scientist. He received a BA from Stanford and a PhD from Harvard. His research has appeared in the Journal of Public Economics and other prestigious publications. He lives in New York City.
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Reviews for Everybody Lies
909 ratings75 reviews
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Mildly entertaining. Nothing new. Lots of little stories without much conceptual vison, scientific conclusions or policy proposals.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fascinating book. Dense with anecdotes and studies that you'll want to share with friends and family. Entertaining, engaging, informative, thought-provoking. A really great ride!
I listen to many audiobooks but this is the first time in going to buy a physical copy after listening to the audio version. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I’m looking to switch careers and move into data science. This book solidified my excitement for using data to answer big questions.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very good book on how to approach data and ask relevant questions- Google is very useful but there are also other data sources that you can cleverly use- Finally, know the limitations of big data, don't fall prey to dimensionality curse. And make sure to use both small and big data :D
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Data Data Data, the book is about many topics that we can learn about ourselves using search data
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great book, i love it. Please you gotta read it
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Brought my interest in social science research!! Good read for expert as well as noob!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I listened to the last word!
Enjoy that beer!! Thanks - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This book is based on Google search information, anonymous people, data, I found interesting and intriguing. If you’re a big data fan this is worthy of of reading .
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inteligente, muito bem escrito e muito bem narrado. Quero mais!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5As an aspiring entrepreneur, this was a quite motivational book for me. It witilly outlines the possibilities of big data and shows the big picture of what a little bit of analytical thinking, access to the google search history and good ideas can whip up.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Entertaining and helped me see the world differently. I have a better understanding of what Big Data can and cannot do and the ethical questions that can come from it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What makes this book great is the author acknowledges the fallacies of Big Data along with it's possibilities. A really balanced perspective.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Excellent work. There's a lot of insight in this book, I really enjoyed it.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Buku ini bercerita tentang pentingnya big data dalam semua aspek kehidupan, big data bisa membuat analisa lebih tepat dalam memproyeksikan sesuatu, namun dalam melaksanakannya harus berpegang pada etika-etika yang universal untuk umat manusia.
Data scientist adalah bidang baru yang akan bersinar ke depannya - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book funny and educational. Narrator is so nice. I love it!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wonderful... A must read.... We can understand through this book too many things
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enjoyable with some interesting and unexpected results. Overall found the personal reflections or discussions in the book to feel a bit sexist.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very accurate description about today’s data as an import tool! I actually found the examples helpful for understanding the importance of well managed databases.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Many blind spots. A bit Pompous and a giant testament to data correlation not causation.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great read. Like freakonomics with telling cool stories with data. Very enjoyable
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Smart and entertaining. Good and simple book about big data analysis with real cases
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My favorite book. This book is consistently interesting and surprising.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book is easy to follow, its structure is pretty suitable for daily commute.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Definetly worth reading. I am waiting for the next book. Very informative and interesting. If one wants to know waht data science is all about, this is the book to start with...
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Interesting book, if you can stomach the author’s delusional partisan bias against President Trump.
Numerous instances of implausible causality attributed to unrelated data.
Otherwise an ok book. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Very interesting and eye opening! It’s hard to get through books with so much data, but this was to good not to see the end.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great to listen too if you want to understand data
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Engaging one. Good overview of what data says of us.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Great Book....if you liked Freakonomics. You will love this one.