Review: Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are

Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I found this a great primer on big data. By and large it had somewhat of a "freakonomics" feel, and the author admits that that was his initial inspiration. But what got me excited was how big data could be applied to pretty much any field from now on. The section toward the end, discussing how Karl Popper's quote re: psychology not being falsifiable now finally seems to be incorrect. 

I think the implications are enormous. Take any field, like anthropology in Japan, as a random example. Based on all records collected and collated ever since written records were kept, entire family trees and histories and movements can be tracked and analyzed. Combine this with historical records on weather, harvests, wars, etc., and we can get much much clearer pictures of not only that a migration occurred due to this or that, but which neighbors moved, which didn't, what happened to their direct descendents, and how that affected whoever is alive today. 

Now imagine what else could be accomplished in pretty much any other field. 

Another interesting point that was pretty much just glossed over was that you shouldn't draw general conclusions from A/B tests. For example, if you have a blue button and a red button, and the red one gets more clicks, this doesn't mean people necessarily have a preference for red. It just means the red button works best on this one particular occasion. 

Regardless, an interesting book. I do wish it had concentrated more on this potential than on the quirky Freakonomics-style subjects, but there you go. 

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