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Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking)
Crown
September 2014
On Sale: September 9, 2014
304 pages ISBN: 0385347375 EAN: 9780385347372 Kindle: B00J1IQUX8 Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
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. Visually arresting and 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.
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