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Dataclysm is a fun popular approach to scientific data analysis and interpretation. This a very enjoyable fascinating reading. There are many good things about this book: it deals with data in a passionate and entertaining way, and makes something a priori not that interesting to people who do not love data, really interesting! The book does so in a very clear and approachable language. Besides, Rudder is an insider who knows what he is talking about first hand so everything he says is worth listening to. After all he is not one of those lorikeets who repeat data analysis and statistics without understanding anything about them or even questioning the results. Rudder comes trough as a lovely chap, inquisitive mind, and passionate about the work he does. Most importantly, he comes through also as an unpretentious guy who wants to connect with the reader.
Perhaps the main take from the book to me is that mathematicians and data analysts are coming down to something that Social Sciences and Humanities wanted them to come to decades ago, and, most importantly, they now have the tools to deal with humongous amounts of real-life real-people's life to do that.
The most interesting parts of the book, at least to me, are chapters 12 (Know your Place) and chapter 14 (Bread crumbs). The first because it shows, even at an embryonary level, that geographical maps are sometimes just lines drawn on a piece a paper, while other factors, beyond the place you live, have way more importance. The Dolly project seems to me the most fascinating thing in the world and I would have loved more details about it.Read more ›
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77 of 88 people found the following review helpful
This book may be to Data Science and Big Data what Freakonomics was to Economics.
The author is one of the founders of the dating web site OKCupid and has spent a lot of time sifting through the vast amount of data collected by user interactions with their website and each other, and he uses this wealth of personal and private information to explore what it can tell us about human social behavior.
The writing is excellent and it is a very fun read (I was hooked by the second page of the introduction, finished it in a couple sittings, and was never bored).
There's lots of information in this book that will make you think, and a lot worth talking about more. I think it's at its best in the first part where the theme is "things that bring us together" and he talks about statistics relating to how people find each other on his dating site. In the second part of the book "what pulls us apart" he deals with issues like race and what his data shows about the prevalence of racism in American society, as well as the internet's capacity for rage. The last part of the book "what makes us who we are" continues with the relationships theme as he investigates a few more racial as well as gay and bi-sexual issues before covering a few miscellaneous topics like comparing the kind of uses of this data he makes and his vision of using it for good compared to things like marketing and government spying.
People who consider themselves Data Scientists may be bothered by the fact that he does not go into much formal detail and actually few of his analyses require any fancy math or a PhD in anything.Read more ›
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64 of 82 people found the following review helpful
The author implies that this book presents data which will change the way we see ourselves. Not true. Instead, what we have here are snippets of often interesting but, for the most part, unrelated bits of data sourced variously and without mention of method.
There are two issues with the data itself. It's not cohesive. That is, the author doesn't drive toward a point or perform research. Instead he samples this or that he apparently either finds interesting himself or he thinks the readers will enjoy absorbing. Some of the data is worth thinking about or discussing around the water cooler tomorrow at work. The other issue is the interpretation the author puts on the data or the lack of it or something or other.
A good deal of the data is taken from the dating site, OKCupid.com which the author started along with two others. Any person who's taken Statistics 101 can tell you that this sample has a few issues from self-section to it not representing humanity as a whole. For example, you can be well assured that no happily married folks had anything to do with these data sets. Aren't happily married people part of `humanity'?
The second issue starts with the author seeming to make a good deal out of nothing. In one chart with frequency of words used to describe oneself cross tabbed with race, he finds Hispanic males rarely describe themselves as having a southern accent, having blue eyes or being a redneck. I believe the author's data here, but did I need to see this chart to know these things?
In another chart, how men rate women's looks is cross tabbed by women's race. The chart shows that black women are, and are by far, rated as less good looking than Asian, Latina or white women. So what do we take from that?Read more ›
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This item: Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking)
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