Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz:
• Explores how data from sources like Google, Facebook and dating sites reveals surprising truths about human behavior
• Debunks common myths about our motivations, thoughts, and perceptions and how what people say about themselves doesn’t match the way they actually behave
• Demonstrates the power of big data in uncovering answers to questions previously thought to be unanswerable
• Introduces data-driven social science and explains how to use data to draw conclusions about people’s values, beliefs, and preferences
As a UX Designer, this book is highly relevant because it discusses the power of data in understanding people's values, beliefs and preferences. It focuses extensively on the insights that can be gathered from social media, search engines and other online sources, which can be used to create effective designs that speaks to the user's needs and wants.
Other recommended books, based on this book and your profession, include: The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman, Bubbleproof: The Art and Science of Becoming Lean and Resilient by Garrett Marks and Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience by Jeff Gothelf.
🎀 Highlights
no matter how true to ourselves and those around us we claim to be, to some extent or another, we still lie.
it is now possible to analyze revealing patterns in our behavior and identify preferences that we never knew about before.
what big data has to offer, from reporting on the state of our health, to revealing strange human quirks, to
we’re all data scientists in a way.
At 88, his grandma had seen plenty of relationships come and go. She was using years of information and data gathering to articulate the characteristics she saw as essential in successful relationships.
utilizing gathered data correctly is essential to refining one’s worldview.
she was convinced that relationships last longer if partners have mutual friends.
A 2014 study by Lars Backstrom and Jon Kleinberg, based on Facebook data, showed couples with more friends in common were more likely to change their relationship status from “in a relationship” to “single.”
Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s search engine, founded in 1998, became such a giant not simply because they were able to collect lots of data. Rather, what set Google apart was that the collected data could be used efficiently.
They figured out that a website was likely more relevant to someone if it had more links from other sites that took a user to
They figured out that a website was likely more relevant to someone if it had more links from other sites that took a user to it. So, Bill Clinton’s official White House website, which was the target of thousands of links, would be more useful than, for example, a site with only a hundred links, even though it might mention him by name more often.
They figured out that a website was likely more relevant to someone if it had more links from other sites that took a user to it.
about their grade point averages, or GPA. Among the respondents, two percent admitted they had graduated with a GPA lower than 2.5 on a four-point scale.
their grade point averages, or GPA. Among the respondents, two percent admitted they had graduated with a GPA lower than 2.5 on a four-point scale.
two percent admitted they had graduated with a GPA lower than 2.5 on a four-point scale.
two percent admitted they had graduated with a GPA lower than 2.5 on a four-point scale. However, according to official records, the number was much higher, at 11 percent.
universal truth about surveying: people lie.
people adapt their answers to make a more positive view of themselves.
behavior of giving answers that make us look better is called social desirability bias.
readiness among respondents to want to impress the person administering the survey.
if you were answering questions from someone who looked like your dad, you might be unwilling to detail college drug experiences.
reason why big data is so powerful: it doesn’t lie. Because it's collected through unfiltered online behavior,
But when the author analyzed data from the porn site PornHub, he found that some women were searching for “anal apple.” This just goes to show that big data can reveal some surprising things about
Raj Chetty wanted to investigate whether people thought the American dream was still alive. He decided to use big data to help form an answer to a more precise question: can people whose parents are poor grow up to become rich themselves?
The data was revealing. It showed that when compared with other developed countries like Denmark and Canada, the situation in the United States wasn’t great for poor people.
In San Jose, California, a poor American stood a 12.9 percent chance of getting rich, which is better than in Denmark. But for an American growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina, the chances were only 4.4 percent.
When he did so, he found the data revealed that the American dream did exist – but only in a few places. In San Jose, California, a poor American stood a 12.9 percent chance of getting rich, which is better than in Denmark. But for an American growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina, the chances were only 4.4 percent.
Every day, we’re bombarded with stories about correlations. A food is linked with a disease. A habit is linked with success. These correlations seem credible at first, but correlation doesn’t necessarily imply a cause-and-effect relationship.
to learn about the causal effect of something, you’d need to establish causality by using randomized, controlled experiments, commonly called A/B tests.
found a gene, IGF2r, that was indicative of people’s IQ.
IGF2r was two times as likely to occur in students with high IQs.
Unfortunately, the correlation was a fluke.
There’s another problem with big data. It often lacks so-called small data, the kind of data that is about the human experience.
small data is essential. Facebook gathers this sort of data through other methods, namely by using smaller-scale surveys to ask users about their opinions and experiences on the site.
Google searches are significantly correlated with actual suicide rates. But that correlation was only valid at the state level.
People rarely fill out surveys honestly, which skews our understanding of the world.
that is, the collection of incredibly large amounts of data from,
that is, the collection of incredibly large amounts of data from, for
from, for example, Google searches – we are able to spot patterns in human behavior and identify preferences that we never knew about before.
recognize patterns.
no matter how true to ourselves and those around us we claim to be, to some extent or another, we still lie.
it is now possible to analyze revealing patterns in our behavior and identify preferences that we never knew about before.
what big data has to offer, from reporting on the state of our health, to revealing strange human quirks, to
we’re all data scientists in a way.
At 88, his grandma had seen plenty of relationships come and go. She was using years of information and data gathering to articulate the characteristics she saw as essential in successful relationships.
utilizing gathered data correctly is essential to refining one’s worldview.
she was convinced that relationships last longer if partners have mutual friends.
A 2014 study by Lars Backstrom and Jon Kleinberg, based on Facebook data, showed couples with more friends in common were more likely to change their relationship status from “in a relationship” to “single.”
Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s search engine, founded in 1998, became such a giant not simply because they were able to collect lots of data. Rather, what set Google apart was that the collected data could be used efficiently.
They figured out that a website was likely more relevant to someone if it had more links from other sites that took a user to
They figured out that a website was likely more relevant to someone if it had more links from other sites that took a user to it. So, Bill Clinton’s official White House website, which was the target of thousands of links, would be more useful than, for example, a site with only a hundred links, even though it might mention him by name more often.
They figured out that a website was likely more relevant to someone if it had more links from other sites that took a user to it.
about their grade point averages, or GPA. Among the respondents, two percent admitted they had graduated with a GPA lower than 2.5 on a four-point scale.
their grade point averages, or GPA. Among the respondents, two percent admitted they had graduated with a GPA lower than 2.5 on a four-point scale.
two percent admitted they had graduated with a GPA lower than 2.5 on a four-point scale.
two percent admitted they had graduated with a GPA lower than 2.5 on a four-point scale. However, according to official records, the number was much higher, at 11 percent.
universal truth about surveying: people lie.
people adapt their answers to make a more positive view of themselves.
behavior of giving answers that make us look better is called social desirability bias.
readiness among respondents to want to impress the person administering the survey.
if you were answering questions from someone who looked like your dad, you might be unwilling to detail college drug experiences.
reason why big data is so powerful: it doesn’t lie. Because it's collected through unfiltered online behavior,
But when the author analyzed data from the porn site PornHub, he found that some women were searching for “anal apple.” This just goes to show that big data can reveal some surprising things about
Raj Chetty wanted to investigate whether people thought the American dream was still alive. He decided to use big data to help form an answer to a more precise question: can people whose parents are poor grow up to become rich themselves?
The data was revealing. It showed that when compared with other developed countries like Denmark and Canada, the situation in the United States wasn’t great for poor people.
In San Jose, California, a poor American stood a 12.9 percent chance of getting rich, which is better than in Denmark. But for an American growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina, the chances were only 4.4 percent.
When he did so, he found the data revealed that the American dream did exist – but only in a few places. In San Jose, California, a poor American stood a 12.9 percent chance of getting rich, which is better than in Denmark. But for an American growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina, the chances were only 4.4 percent.
Every day, we’re bombarded with stories about correlations. A food is linked with a disease. A habit is linked with success. These correlations seem credible at first, but correlation doesn’t necessarily imply a cause-and-effect relationship.
to learn about the causal effect of something, you’d need to establish causality by using randomized, controlled experiments, commonly called A/B tests.
found a gene, IGF2r, that was indicative of people’s IQ.
IGF2r was two times as likely to occur in students with high IQs.
Unfortunately, the correlation was a fluke.
There’s another problem with big data. It often lacks so-called small data, the kind of data that is about the human experience.
small data is essential. Facebook gathers this sort of data through other methods, namely by using smaller-scale surveys to ask users about their opinions and experiences on the site.
Google searches are significantly correlated with actual suicide rates. But that correlation was only valid at the state level.
People rarely fill out surveys honestly, which skews our understanding of the world.
that is, the collection of incredibly large amounts of data from,
that is, the collection of incredibly large amounts of data from, for
from, for example, Google searches – we are able to spot patterns in human behavior and identify preferences that we never knew about before.
