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

by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

My grandmother is Big Data.

At its core, data science is about spotting patterns and predicting how one variable will affect another. People do this all the time.

When you were a kid, you noticed that when you cried, your mom gave you attention.

African-American kids born into poverty are nearly twice as likely to have a name that is given to no other child born in that same year.

Big Data allows us to finally see what people really want and really do, not what they say they want and say they do. Providing honest data is the second power of Big Data.