Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Dataclysm: Who We Are When We Think No One's Looking
    Unavailable
    Dataclysm: Who We Are When We Think No One's Looking
    Unavailable
    Dataclysm: Who We Are When We Think No One's Looking
    Audiobook7 hours

    Dataclysm: Who We Are When We Think No One's Looking

    Written by Christian Rudder

    Narrated by Kaleo Griffith

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A New York Times Bestseller

    An audacious, irreverent investigation of human behavior-and a first look at a revolution in the making

    Our personal data has been used to spy on us, hire and fire us, and sell us stuff we don't need. In Dataclysm, Christian Rudder uses it to show us who we truly are.

    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 have become the new demographers.

    In this daring and original book, Rudder explains how Facebook "likes" can predict, with surprising accuracy, a person's sexual orientation and even intelligence; how attractive women receive exponentially more interview requests; and why you must have haters to be hot. He charts the rise and fall of America's most reviled word through Google Search and examines the new dynamics of collaborative rage on Twitter. He shows how people express themselves, both privately and publicly. What is the least Asian thing you can say? Do people bathe more in Vermont or New Jersey? What do black women think about Simon & Garfunkel? (Hint: they don't think about Simon & Garfunkel.) Rudder also traces human migration over time, showing how groups of people move from certain small towns to the same big cities across the globe. And he grapples with the challenge of maintaining privacy in a world where these explorations are possible.

    Full of wit and insight, Dataclysm is a new way of seeing ourselves-a brilliant alchemy, in which math is made human and numbers become the narrative of our time.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 9, 2014
    ISBN9780553397505
    Unavailable
    Dataclysm: Who We Are When We Think No One's Looking

    Related to Dataclysm

    Related audiobooks

    Psychology For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Battle For Our Brains

      Jan 31, 2020

      REPORTING can be a scary job. I’ve had nervous moments with warlords, gangsters and neo-Nazis. I have been shot at and threatened. But if Tristan Harris is right about what he’s telling me, then the presentation playing now on his phone is the most f

      8 min read

    • Article

      Platforms Are Not Publishers

      Aug 10, 2018

      Platforms Are Not Publishers
      5 min read

    • Article

      What If Donald Trump Were Smart?

      Jan 28, 2018

      What if Donald Trump were smart? It is likely not a question you've given a lot of thought. After all, the urgency of our ongoing disaster leaves little time for speculation. One is too busy tallying up the damage that's happening to worry about the

      2 min read

    • Article

      QAnon & co

      Dec 18, 2020

      QAnon & co
      6 min read

    • Article

      Trump’s Role in the Capitol Riot

      Aug 24, 2023

      Not long ago, when the January 6th Committee was investigating the causes of the 2021 attack on the United States Capitol Building, its members reached out to Stephen Reicher. Reicher is a social psychologist at the University of St Andrews, across t

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Behavioral Economics Manifesto Gets Revised

      Jul 27, 2021

      We speak with the Nobel Prize-winning founder of behavioral economics about the new — and last — version of his classic book, Nudge.

      6 min read

    • Article

      You’re Being Manipulated

      Jul 9, 2021

      You’re Being Manipulated
      19 min read

    • Article

      Selfishness Is Learned: We tend to be cooperative—unless we think too much.

      Jun 9, 2016

      Many people cheat on taxes—no mystery there. But many people don’t, even if they wouldn’t be caught—now, that’s weird. Or is it? Psychologists are deeply perplexed by human moral behavior, because it often doesn’t seem to make any logical sense. You

      11 min read

    • Article

      Six Degrees of Separation at Burning Man

      Jul 11, 2019

      Today the alkaline desert is quiet. The roar of techno music and flamethrowers has been replaced with the soft clink of rakes and trash cans. Thousands of people put aside their hangovers to methodically clean the desert. After a dedicated communal c

      12 min read

    • Article

      How To Build The Future Of Social Media

      May 11, 2022

      Social scientist WHAT’S WRONG WITH SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS AS WE KNOW THEM? We’ve just accepted that how social media is now, is how it’s always going to be. But Facebook started as a site for college students to rate each other’s physical attractiven

      4 min read

    • Article

      Why We Love to Blame 2016

      Jan 1, 2017

      Why We Love to Blame 2016
      3 min read

    Reviews for Dataclysm

    3.5/5

    238 ratings35 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I loved this book, and I want to say at the outset, that if you need “fodder” for starting conversations at social gatherings, this book is replete with it! The author, Christian Rudder, is President and Co-founder of the dating site, OKCupid. He began collating and charting data from his own site, and then expanded his database by looking at comparative data from “rival” dating sites, Facebook, twitter and other social media sites. What he has found out is just amazing. The underlying theme is that, no matter what people claim about themselves and how they express themselves in surveys, what they actually believe and do is often quite different, but can be discovered by their online interactions. Even in the privacy of one’s own home, what one searches for in Google is revelatory.I think my favorite aspect of this book is how it demonstrates the remarkable revolution in sociological research. It makes me gnash my teeth in regret that I did my own studies before this sort of data had become available - what fun it would have been! (Not that I didn’t have fun, in a bizarre, pedantic sort of way, but just saying….) For example, you can analyze tweets to see which people celebrate certain traditions, and how closely these mirror political borders. Using the program DOLLY (Digital Online Life and You) - to cite just one example, researchers found that the Dutch holiday of Sint Maarten is not only celebrated in the northern Netherlands, but also in Western Belgium: “the tweets reconnect old Holland to Flanders, its cultural cousin.” As the author observes: “Thus we watch an animated visualization of GPS-enabled data points, and see shadows of the Hapburgs." Just imagine, he says, if we could have tracked the tweets in Alsace-Lorraine over the years as it changed hands from German to French to German to French, with each government trying to impose its culture and language on the people. [When we traveled to that area, it was clear the mix was still trying to sort itself out!]Other entertaining discoveries: research on Facebook has now verified that most of us are in fact connected by six degrees of separation; the majority of searches for “missed connections” are from sightings at Walmart (and most of those are in the South); when white men write essays about themselves for dating sites, the most commonly used word after “the” is “pizza”; the most antithetically used words (words used most used by everyone else but least used by specific groups) for Asian men include “layed back” [spelled wrong] and ”6’4” (oddly, the second most typical phrase for Asian women is “tall for an asian”); and that the Center for Disease Control coordinates with Google to track epidemics because when people are getting sick, they search for symptoms and remedies.Far and away the most revelatory data have to do with race and gender preference. The author explains, for instance, that a variety of indications (searches, friend connections, etc.) suggest the figure of 5% of the population being gay is pretty accurate and holds true across the states. But the number of self-reporting gays varies by the level of acceptance by states. So for example, if you see a state in which only 1.5% of respondents self-report as gay, you can probably pretty safely assume that 3.5% are in the closet. (He provides a lot of documentation to substantiate this.)The details on race are the saddest, and show the extent to which race still is in fact a problem in the U.S. (in case you could possibly doubt it). Rudder reports data (not only from OKCupid but also DateHookup and match.com - a total of around 20 million Americans) on ratings of each group (white, black, Asian, and Hispanic) for each sex by each group, ranking the attractiveness of the other sex by race alone. Every single category and sex rates black women the lowest. Claiming to be part white elevates one’s rating substantially. Perhaps most significantly, data outside the U.S. reveal no such bias! He also talks about spikes in Google for searches like jokes about [the “n” word] that correspond precisely to peaks in Obama’s presidential campaign cycle.In addition, as the author explains, you can find out a lot about peoples’ prejudices by watching the operation of Google’s sentence completion function. Google will fill in the most popular responses as you begin questions like, “Why do all blacks….” “Why do all gays….” “Why do husbands….,” etc.Finally, the author includes a very thorough discussion about privacy, even bringing the Edward Snowden revelations to bear.Discussion: I could have a couple of small quibbles. As one illustration, the author made a chart correlating the age at which a woman looks “most attractive” to a man by the age of the man. As the age of the man increases, the age of the woman by and large does not. But does that mean men find aging unattractive, or could there be a conscious or subconscious consideration that older women either might already have children (a.k.a. “baggage”) or conversely, might not be able to have children, which the man might want? [Or am I just trying to come up with reasons why aging women aren't really seen as less attractive?]And speaking of the constraints of the data, the way questions are formulated doesn’t necessarily allow for all possible variables that might come into play. [Example from a recent Facebook “test” I took: “Do you prefer acid rock, pop, or rap? Those were all the choices; no “other”; no “none of the above”. I was forced to make a choice and provide an answer that wasn’t at all accurate.]In other words, I sometimes want more “data” to understand the data. (Rudder says in the Afterword that he deliberately omitted statistical details to make the book more readable, because “mathematical wonkiness” wasn’t what he was trying to get across.) He does add references in the back whenever possible for further study.Another small criticism I have is that the author presents so many arresting data findings that he sometimes goes from one to the other without full elucidation.On the other hand, I am confident the author is aware of all of this. He acknowledges an intellectual debt to Edward Tufte, who is a (perhaps “the”) leading authority on the uses, misuses, ambiguities, and deceptiveness of data, and Rudder acknowledges:"
…behind every number there ’s a person making decisions: what to analyze, what to exclude, what frame to set around whatever pictures the numbers paint.”As he concludes, this science of data analysis is just in its beginning stages; he is trying to give us a taste of what is already out there, and what is to come. It is aggregate data, he cautions; we still have to account for individual differences and quirks. But it sure is fascinating to find out what the numbers show about broad trends.Evaluation: This book is full of stunning and provocative information about who we are, as well as who we want to be (but aren’t, at least not yet). Learning “sociology” has never been this fun!
    • 2/5
      I spent the first couple of chapters arguing with the author…does that make this a good book or a bad book? The author works for an online dating service and much of his research is from that site but I really struggled to get past what I thought were some bad assumptions in his research – mainly that attractiveness = desire to date. Finally, by chapter 5, I started feeling vindicated by Crazy Blind Date results and the author had my full attention by chapter 10 as he was comparing words used to self-describe male vs. female or white, black, Asian, and Latino users of the dating service.This book is topical whether you are concerned about the NSA’s information gathering or you are a fan of books like The Circle. There is not a lot new about data mining but there are good explanations about how his decisions were made to extract the results. It was both eye-opening and disappointing to me, from a social science point of view, at how stereotyped our descriptions of ourselves are.
    • 4/5
      (This is a review for the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program)Fascinating book! Christian Rudder, a founder of OKCupid, examines data from his site and others (i.e. Google searches and Twitter hashtags) to reveal trends about who we are as humans. Some of the results are quite surprising, both in good and, frankly, not so good ways. He examines thoughts on race, beauty, politics, and more. Seeing the visual representation of the data via graphs really drove home some of the author's points for me. I enjoyed his writing style and sense of humor.This book reminded me of Freakonomics in that it got me to think about things in new ways. If you liked that book, I recommend reading this one, too.
    • 4/5
      Another popular look at big data and the science around it. I am personally engrossed in what people are to extrapolate from big data. The more data collected over time, will only explode the understanding of who we truly are as an aggregate. Studies of our behavior is much more telling than our memories or perception.
    • 4/5
      Very fascinating read on how Big Data tells us more about human behavior and trends and how this information is compiled and used.
    • 4/5
      I was sure that I reviewed this previously. . . Great book. I've shared it widely with colleagues. I was pleased to see his op-ed in the NYT. Must read for anyone who regularly works with data.
    • 4/5
      This is a beautiful book, thoughtfully designed to illuminate insights from one large set of data, which helps us think about what can be learned from what people do and say on various vast and rapidly accumulating warehouses of words. Interestingly enough, what people say when asked specific questions (about prejudices, for example) may be different from what they reveal in their aggregate posts. There is really no privacy concern in what is revealed here (although you could think that he invaded OkCupid patron privacy by even having access to it). Instead he mines his data to show interesting patterns of words used (or not used) by races, sexes, ages, and geographical areas. He shows commonalities and he shows differences— and it’s hard not to see that he is right on with his subtitle, that we really do reveal things about ourselves that we might not even consciously recognize. Different data will allow other questions to be asked, the longitudinal studies made possible by this sort of analysis will be fascinating. And he is right to get this in front of people who may think that they are in no way representative of their various identity stereotypes— they may be surprised. The book is thought provoking, the writing is wry and engaging, the mirror it holds up a clear one.
    • 3/5
      Pretty much exactly what I heard about this - there's some interesting numbers here, but not nearly enough interrogation of the assumptions he's making about what those numbers mean. So it's flawed, but it's interesting, in about equal measure.
    • 3/5
      This book is a very accessibly written introduction to the world of big data. Rather than being a dry technical piece, it highlights the world of OKCupid to make its examples with some levity. There are intriguing bits sprinkled throughout. I find it fascinating how our internet behavior has begun to offer insights into the way humans are in the privacy of our own homes and lives. It was a bit like I was watching my neighbors through the windows while I was reading.
    • 4/5
      Engaging exploration of what we can learn from our online activity. Pulling data from OK Cupid, Facebook and Google, it finds some unexpected group behavior in the data gathered by users browsing on their own.The book is pleasant from the very start. It is a soft paperpack in catchy colors. The tone is light with honest enthusiasm, like a friend explaining his hobby. Each issue is introduced properly and resolved in a graph clear and relevant. They are well selected, talking about real-world topics interesting to an average informed person.Although the conclusions are not mind-blowing, it is still interesting to see real data backing up (and adjusting) the intuition.
    • 4/5
      I received a paperback edition. The cover had a pleasant, soft texture, and was not excessively smooth.The book was a short but engaging read. The shortness made it somewhat unsatisfactory as various interesting details of the analysis were omitted. For example, I could find no discussion of how exactly the most representative words were chosen in the word squares examples.Rudder argues that his datasets are much more complete than the usual social science experiment data sets, and he is absolutely right on this one.His presentation is well thought out. In an afterward, he mentions that he was guided as much as possible in his graphs by the advice of Tufte in his various books, and this shows in two ways. First, his graphs really are quite informative. Second, they are run into the text rather than encapsulated in numbered figures. The first is good, the second can sometimes be confusing when the text does not clearly relate to the graphs.Some of the things he discusses do not really require any analysis and are mostly just a sad comment on human nature. For example, the Twitter rage mobs that he describes continue to arise. His realization that these can arise on both sides of the meaningless political divide that is described as conservative/liberal does not amount to much. The more significant divide is between those who would participate in a hate mob and those who would not.His discussions of race and of gender issues outside OK Cupid were generally rather interesting and backed up w/ statistical evidence.This is a book that is worth keeping around, to think about its conclusions more deeply, and also the promise that Rudder sees in "big data".He briefly discusses the loss of privacy and his own limited use of social media.His word squares analyses are interesting but do not actually tell us much because it is not clear that what happens on Twitter really reflects anything of actual importance.
    • 4/5
      I think the part I liked most about this book about big data is that it didn’t reach for too many big conclusions. Instead author Christian Rudder largely seems content to present the smaller conclusions of the data that are interesting and informative and largely leaves it up to the reader to draw together any conclusions about how these little insights add up. This leaves the reader with a nice, breezy read that won’t revolutionize pop science but also won’t be leave the author embarrassed at having drawn the wrong conclusions from his data.
    • 3/5
      This is an interesting book that discusses the cumulation of large amounts of data. This data can then be analyzed, studied and manipulated to produce results. However, like all amounts of mass data, the results can be less than expected.Since the data was collected from an English language dating site, the information is from a select group of people who are trying to persuade other people of another restricted group to find them attractive. Thus, the data is selected from people who have the time and connection to the internet to fill out the forms; those who want another relationship; and from people who may or may not be willing to tell the truth to get a date. So the data is limited and cannot be universally applied, and must be suspect to some degree.Also, the answers are extracted from questions that are not specifically written to elicit a solid response. This is a bugabear of all polling attempts- how to phrase the question to get the correct range of answers. By applying analysis afterwards, Mr. Rudder is analyzing suspect data. Interesting nevertheless, but again this is not universally applied data about people or relationships.Within these restrictions, Mr. Rudder does an excellent job of writing about people and how they answered his questions with large amounts of data. The answers were often surprising, and the book is well written and insightful.However, the results are on par with a Wikipedia article- interesting but not authoritative. This book is a good popular discussion of big data, and how large computer sites can use or abuse accumulated data freely given by their users. I suspect also that twenty years from now, this book will be used in computer courses to show the history of large data manipulation and development, in much the same way Henry Hollerith's 19th century punched cards are viewed today. I just don't know if then the book will be used to show how it developed as a good thing, or to demonstrate the pitfalls in trying to use large amounts of data for interesting but non-revealing results.
    • 4/5
      So much information. More and more information is gathered everyday. What does it all mean? Christian Rudder makes the analysis of such data both interesting and entertaining. Only the last chapter has negative overtones. Even when we are not being watched - alone at our computers - we still seem to project a character that we want others to believe we are, rather than who we actually are.
    • 5/5
      Excellent read. Rudder takes data that could be overwhelming and turns it into understandable charts, layouts, and information. He's really excellent at explaining the statistics of it without being confusing or condescending. And the actual information he presents is fascinating. It's a great use of the data we submit every day without realizing it - might as well learn something from ourselves. He gets a little wordy when he starts waxing poetic, but overall an interesting, entertaining read.
    • 3/5
      A few weeks ago there was a mild furor after Facebook admitted that they’d run an experiment on some users, adjusting their news feeds to include more positive or more negative items than the norm, and recording how the emotional tone of the users’ own posts changed in result. After a week or so of media discussion, Christian Rudder, a founder of the online dating site OkCupid, volunteered that his site had done something similar. He’d deliberately matched OkCupid customers with people rated as being poorly compatible and monitored reports about the resulting in-person dates.He accepted interviews to explain himself, and in them he was absolutely unapologetic. Not only does he not see an ethical problem in defying user’s expectations about the site’s behavior, he says that an online company that does not engage in this kind of experimentation is irresponsible, because it is foregoing opportunities to learn how to improve its customer-aiding algorithms. He is convinced that every online company engages in similar tests, and asserts that they do as a fact.This is the context into which Rudder’s new book, Dataclysm, is released. In it, Rudder reveals himself as an enthusiast for both data and people—at least when considered in the abstract. His thesis is that the Internet has made it possible, for the first time in history, to obtain (almost as a side effect) massive amounts of data about what people are really like—how they behave and what they think in secret. The fourteen chapters are based around broad themes and contain many interesting maps, graphs, and charts, startlingly illustrating what the data tells us. The charts are like salted peanuts. It’s hard to find the will to stop consuming them.Rudder presents the data in an engagingly enthusiastic, casual way. At times he achieves a little poetry, such as when discussing a map showing the density of reactions on Twitter to an earthquake, overlaying a map showing the epicenter: “Here we see contours of surprise laid over the shifting earth.” At other times he seems clueless, even crude. This is nowhere more true than in the first chapter, which is devoted to the hoary truth that young women remain equally attractive to men throughout men’s lives. Rudder treats the depressing data with a glib tone, and troublingly, doesn’t pause to consider that when older men date older women, an explanation may be that older men have learned that sexual attraction is only one ingredient in a healthy relationship. He seems to prefer the explanation than men are simply hypocrites, pretending to desire that which they do not.It’s a shame that he leads with this chapter, because the rest are better. Did you know that you’ll tend to date more frequently and successfully if people either love you or hate you than if everybody just thinks you’re kind of cute? That people in Mississippi bathe more often than people in any other state? And what does it mean that women are more “race-loyal” than men, preferring more strongly than men do to date people of the same race?In addition to presenting interesting data, Rudder discusses what kinds of data about your life is being collected by various types of sites and agencies, and demonstrates the surprising ways they can use the information. Facebook and the NSA, of course, are part of the discussion. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if you have any interest at all in the data that is being collected and shared about you, you’ll want to read Chapter 14. Rudder isn’t completely deaf to the implications of data mining, including the ethical implications. He just thinks he falls on the right side of the line. Others disagree.
    • 3/5
      This is a really clever and interesting book about data and what it can tell us about the world. It was a quick read even at 250 pages, had great charts (which makes sense, as at the end he shares that he used Edward Tufte’s visual displays as a guide, and Tufte’s displays are the best), and was interesting. The main reason I only gave it three stars is because as I’m writing this review a mere five hours after finishing it, I can’t really remember much of it.

      Mr. Rudder cofounded OKCupid (the site where I met my husband, so sweet) and used to write blog posts about what he learned from the reams of data OKCupid collected. He taps into profile word choice, attractiveness rankings, number of messages received and a host of other data from this site to draw some high level conclusions that are genuinely of the “huh, that’s kind of interesting” variety.

      And yet I don’t recall any of his big conclusions (although I did enjoy the section that showed by race and gender the least likely words to be found in profiles). I think this book probably would have worked much better as just a series of blog posts on different topic areas; I’m just not convinced that there is enough of a coherent theme for it to hold together strongly as a book. And yet I’d still recommend it to anyone who likes data, sociology and anthropology.

      One chapter I do recall focuses on social media and specifically how users can attack others. But instead of focusing on women like Anita Sarkeesian or women of color who get attacked online just for existing, he chose three examples of women who made varying levels of not-funny jokes. One was Justine Sacco, who made a supremely unfunny and racist joke about AIDS, Africa, and her whiteness. Look, I’m sure that many of the people who jumped on that bandwagon were full of faux outraged, but Mr. Rudder refused to acknowledge that one reason that led to that reaction is because the butts of such jokes (in this case, Black people), have the ability to fight back and be heard in a way they didn’t have before. So it wasn’t just the internet being mean to Ms. Sacco, it was Ms. Sacco having to actually deal with the pain she caused other by telling a racist joke. This is one of the only times that really stuck out to me as Mr. Rudder completely missing the point, though, so I guess that’s a good thing.
    • 3/5
      I was really excited to get a copy of this book by Christian Rudder, whose writing I was familiar with from the OkCupid blog. On the blog, he highlighted all sorts of interesting and surprising information about sex and relationships, derived from the huge amount of data that he had access to as a founder of OkCupid.The book was basically more of the same, which initially sounded like a good thing to me. Rudder has expanded beyond OkCupid to talk about data from sources like Twitter, Facebook, and Google as well, and the chapters are a bit longer than blog posts, but there are some strong similarities to the blog: the book is basically a collection of standalone chapters with no overarching narrative beyond the fact that big data is powerful and exciting, and the tone remains extremely casual. It sometimes actually felt like I was still reading a blog rather than a book.I read maybe the first half of the book very quickly and with great interest, but eventually I found that the disconnected nature of the narrative made it very easy to set the book down for long periods of time, weeks or even months. I never felt compelled to read on and see where the narrative was going. Even more importantly, I sometimes found that Rudder's analysis wasn't particularly deep or compelling. I can actually highlight the exact chapter where my perspective changed: in Chapter 9, Rudder talks about how quickly tweets can go viral and lead to horrible mob-like attacks on individuals. This isn't exactly news, and Rudder doesn't bring much data to bear to illuminate the issue. The only data that he cites for his central argument is a graph about how quickly the views of one particular hashtag increased over time. Everything about the negative aspect of viral tweets is his own unsupported opinion, drawn from just a couple of cases. The central case concerned one particular woman who started receiving death threats after tweeting a racist joke about AIDS on her way to Africa. This woman happened to be someone Rudder knew personally, and "had enjoyed working with" in the past.I've certainly see that people can go crazy on the internet. On the other hand, I've also seen positive viral campaigns leading to enormous charitable donations, or increasing awareness about important issues. More importantly, I don't think it's at all appropriate in a book about big data to abandon both the "big" and the "data" and instead draw conclusions from a single case where you have a personal connection. That one chapter really increased my skepticism about the book as a whole, and dampened my enthusiasm as I read on.
    • 3/5
      Dataclysm is the type of book that when you tell friends what it is about and that you are reading it you immediately sound smart. The dirty little secret is that the world of data (and the corresponding topic of data collection) isn't difficult to understand if it's presented in a graph and then the big takeaway from the graph is explained to the reader with a lol-inducing one-liner. It also helps that most of the data has been pulled from the dating site OkCupid. Is there more of a fascinating world to most people than how we find love or partners?I powered through it but it's certainly something I could see myself going back and re-reading to savor the funnest bits.I think fans of Mary Roach or Freakonomics would enjoy this one.
    • 4/5
      OkCupid is an online dating site that had a great blog that was sadly no longer updated post-2011. This book is the reason why. In this book the author, one of the founders of OkCupid, looks at the trends and patterns provided by a dataset the size of OkCupid. He presents this all in a very colloquial and friendly tone and the book reads more like a really long blog post than a technical overview of big data. The author has strong opinions on data collection and privacy and he works them as well as personal anecdotes into the book as a whole. If you are interested in learning more about big data and data collection in an increasingly digitized world, this book is a great starting point.
    • 4/5
      Great book with interesting anecdotes. The writing style is easy to read and understand. Those with even the most rudimentary understanding of statistics will be able to understand the points being made-- I even found it necessary to skip over some parts with the more simplistic explanations. I learned some curious and interesting things (the best predictor of the quality of a relationship when it starts out is how many times the members of a couple look at each other's facebook pages??) but its strength is also a flaw-- it could have been written at a bit higher level. Still a fun read (great for plane rides!). If you like the okcupid blog, you'll love this book.
    • 3/5
      Dataclysm covers an interesting topic - big data - in a disappointing fashion. Rudder demonstrates how big data can be used in creative and innovative ways, but the focus on OK Cupid diminishes the effect. The results Rudder presents about OK Cupid data are mildly interesting. However, these results have already been highly publicized on Rudder's blog and in the media. You are unlikely to find any new information about human attraction and dating in this book. Rudder does introduce some data from Google, but it is underemployed throughout the book.There are interesting ideas raised by Rudder - racial cleavages in particular - but the majority of Dataclysm is about the banality of dating behavior. In addition, Rudder's methods with this OK Cupid data are occasionally questionable, albeit original. For instance, Rudder "demonstrates" the harsh differences between different races and gender by using an algorithm that detects words that are supposedly characteristic of the demographic group in question. The mechanics of the algorithm, however, are to detect words used by the demographic group, but not used by any other group. When these words are presented, there is no information on how common they are among the group in question. If these words constitute a high percentage of the group's language, this algorithm seems reasonable. However, it seems more likely that the words are rarely used within this demographic group. Thus, the algorithm is constructed to show large demographic differences, even if the differences are in reality miniscule.Finally, Rudder writes with a snarky attitude that rubs readers the wrong way - even those readers who agree with his sentiments. These comments indicate that Rudder is overly confident in the importance in his small findings. Perhaps this is why he has overlooked some of the flaws in his methods.Recommendation: if you are looking for inspiration on using big data in creative ways, skip part 1 and skim parts 2 and 3. If you are interested in human attraction, skip the book and read OK Cupid's blog; you'll save money and time.
    • 4/5
      Okay, so who are we? Have you ever taken a survey--I certainly have--now it turns out we try to kid ourselves into believing we are who we want to be more than perhaps we actually are. Christian Rudder and a partner began a very successful online data service (okcupid), and now we get this rather interesting book telling us who we really are.I find it hard to believe that there is anyone "out there" who doesn't understand that every link we click on, every choice we make, is fodder for social scientists. Arm yourself! Read this very readable and enjoyable book :-)
    • 4/5
      This is a fun, easy-to-read book that came out of Christian Rudder's blog posts on OKCupid, the dating website he runs. Rudder uses the information provided by the site's users - and several other site's users - to make some generalizations about people which some people may find startling. Many seem common sense, but it's amazing how much people will say one thing but do another, and Rudder uncovers lots of these tidbits. I read this book in about three hours over two days, so it's a fast read. Another reviewer here complained about the charts, I found them well-designed and easy to understand, people with less familiarity with chart design may need a bit more time to absorb them.
    • 5/5
      OKCupid is an online dating site with 12 year track record (and counting). The site was launched by a group of friends including Christian Rudder, who is now the leader of the website's analytics team. Translation: he has access to massive amounts of data.Dating websites collect data in various forms. You can look at what people say in response to specific questions, but you can also see how people behave. Rudder, a self-confessed math nerd, wrote many algorithms to explore this data and bring people's behaviour to light en masse. He tells the story of this data through well designed graphs and charts.Here are some of the (politically incorrect) things I've learned:* Men are far more generous than women when rating the attractiveness of the opposite sex.* Women find men around their age to be the most attractive while men of any age find twenty year olds to be the most attractive.* People prefer partners from their own race with one exception: every race prefers to date white people.* A list of frequently used terms broken down by race shows that white people are basically indie-rock lumberjacks.* Straight men and women along with gay women talk about their sexuality while gay men focus on culture (e.g. "anything on bravo" (181)).Are you appalled? Remember, this is not what we say we are or what we aspire to be. This is what big data analysis demonstrates we are, whether it sounds right or not.Dataclysm is a fascinating look at human relationships that no survey could ever tell. It's truly "Who We Are When We Think No One's Looking."
    • 4/5
      Great for fans of Freakonomics! Although he focuses on data compiled from online sources, the author finds unexpected connections and patterns in his analysis, similar to those found in Freakonomics or Malcolm Gladwell's books. His analysis is both rigorous and humorous.
    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this book. I love the data he pulled together to show interesting things about how humans interact while online. While you don't need a background in statistics I will say that my having one made this book a lot deeper. I found myself asking questions about his data and what it was really telling us. Which the author also did on a number of occasions. A great read if you like data and what it tells us.
    • 4/5
      Dataclysm is a good first attempt at making central tenets of Data Science accessible to everyone in a nontechnical manner. Author draws a bit too much from his his proprietary data set at OkCupid (an online dating site) which weakens the overall message of the book. Recommended for anyone looking for a better understand of Big Data and how it will be used in the future.
    • 4/5
      Dataclysm is a popular science book that introduces the concepts, methodologies and outcomes that can be determined from examining Big Data. Christian Rudder, mathematician and one of the founders of the internet dating site OkCupid, uses anonymously collected data from social media and Google, to provide insight on how we behave and what we think / say when no one is looking. The tone is largely irreverent and humorous, but a few of Rudder’s conclusions are startling. The information and discussion are well supplemented by simple but clever inforgarphics that clearly explain and illustrate the data trends examined. The topics that Rudder discusses are engaging, and organized together loosely along similar themes, which makes the book easy to read sporadically and without needing to dedicate huge blocks of time to maintain an understanding. Rudder doesn’t shy away from the mathematics and analytical tools used to draw conclusions, but does keep explanations simple and straightforward. Overall, Dataclysm provides a well-written and successful introduction to Big Data and how data analytics using robust data sets can be used to accurately identify trends and paint a pretty good picture of how people think and behave. Rudder does a great job of keeping the tone friendly and interesting by focusing on pop culture and social mediums. While not a definitive study, the book will appeal to readers interested an introduction to Big Data analytics and trends.
    • 4/5
      The author, Christian Rudder, has a panache for the written word that would take me a decade or more of practice to even come close to emulating. Here he prefers a dense prose, but his tone dances with rhythmic confidence. It's youthfully hip in spite of he author's middle-age. Here's a rare case where I'm happy to enjoy the style, nevermind the substance.As for Dataclysm, his findings are fascinating but it doesn't hurt to have an above-average love for statistics just to wade through it all. For my part, I suspect a shorter essay would have engage me more easily.