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Christian Rudder

Dataclysm

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What is the secret to a stable marriage? How many gay people are still in the closet? Do we truly live in a postracial society? Has Twitter made us dumber? These are just a few of the questions Christian Rudder answers in Dataclysm, a smart, funny, irreverent look at how we act when we think no one's looking. For centuries we've relied on polling or small-scale lab experiments to study human behavior. Today a new approach is possible. As we live more of our lives online, researchers can finally observe us directly, in vast numbers and without filters. Data scientists can quantify the formerly unquantifiable and show with unprecedented precision how we fight, how we age, how we love, and how we change. Our personal data has been used to spy on us, hire and fire us, and sell us stuff we don't need. In Dataclysm, Rudder uses it to show us who we are as people. He reveals how Facebook “likes” can predict, with surprising accuracy, a person's…
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364 printed pages
Publication year
2014
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  • Ekaterina Nuivsetakoeshared an impression6 years ago
    👍Worth reading
    💡Learnt A Lot
    🎯Worthwhile

Quotes

  • Ekaterina Nuivsetakoehas quoted6 years ago
    A person’s “like” pattern even makes a decent proxy for intelligence—this model could reliably predict someone’s score on a standard (separately administered) IQ test, without the person answering a single direct question.
  • Ekaterina Nuivsetakoehas quoted6 years ago
    The fact that Paul McCartney and John Lennon practiced rock music for 10,000 hours and then became the Beatles does say something about the value of rehearsal and persistence, but that number itself means nothing. I myself have put in that kind of time playing guitar, as have many others whose music you’ll never hear. Whatever it was that allowed Lennon and McCartney to turn practice into genius, it’s unique to them. On the other hand, every number in this book has many hundreds, often many thousands, of people behind it, none of them famous. Here’s the kernel of it: the phrase “one in a million” is at the core of so many wonderful works of art. It means a person so special, so talented, so something that they’re practically unique, and that very rareness makes them significant. But in mathematics, and so with data, and so here in this book, the phrase means just the opposite: 1/1,000,000 is a rounding error.
  • Ekaterina Nuivsetakoehas quoted6 years ago
    This is the core concept of personal branding, and like Christianity + the printing press or pro football + television, the idea has found in social media the perfect technology to go global. I won’t rehash the ways sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram give you the power to project yourself to the world. But I will point out that not long ago, only big companies, with big budgets, could get their message heard and beloved by strangers halfway around the globe. Now I can, and so can you, and so can everyone. The hardest part is getting anyone to listen.

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