Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity

'Most data-hyping books are vapor and slogans. Goodreads Semifinalist for Best Nonfiction Book of the Yearįinalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize One of Hudson Booksellers' 5 Best Business Books of 2014

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.Ī Brain Pickings Best Science Book of 2014 And he grapples with the challenge of maintaining privacy in a world where these explorations are possible. 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. He shows how people express themselves, both privately and publicly. 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. 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. Data scientists have become the new demographers.

As we live more of our lives online, researchers can finally observe us directly, in vast numbers, and without filters. In Dataclysm, Christian Rudder uses it to show us who we truly are.įor centuries, we've relied on polling or small-scale lab experiments to study human behavior. Our personal data has been used to spy on us, hire and fire us, and sell us stuff we don't need.

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

Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity