Everybody Lies

by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

First, and perhaps most important, if you are going to try to use new data to revolutionize a field, it is best to go into a field where old methods are lousy.

The second lesson is that, when trying to make predictions, you needn’t worry too much about why your models work.

They scrutinized race times and pedigree charts. Seder’s genius was to look for data where others hadn’t looked before, to consider nontraditional sources of data. For a data scientist, a fresh and original perspective can pay off.

Many people, particularly Marxists, have viewed American journalism as controlled by rich people or corporations with the goal of influencing the masses, perhaps to push people toward their political views. Gentzkow and Shapiro’s paper suggests, however, that this is not the predominant motivation of owners. The owners of the American press, instead, are primarily giving the masses what they want so that the owners can become even richer.

On weekends with a popular violent movie, the economists found, crime dropped.

In the era of Big Data all the world’s a lab.