Author: Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

Publisher: Dey Street Books

Comments:The author, a former data scientist at Google, argues that the web will revolutionise social science just as the microscope and telescope transformed the natural sciences. Microeconomics, sociology, political science and quantitative psychology all depend to a large extent on surveys of a few thousand respondents. In contrast, Big Data has four unique powers: it provides new sources of information; it captures what people actually do or think rather than what they choose to tell researchers; it allows researchers to home in on and compare demographic or geographical subsets; and it allows for speedy randomised controlled trials that demonstrate not just correlation but causality. He illustrates his points with surprising and sometimes disturbing material (such as the prevalence of searches on pornographic sites for videos depicting violence against women, and the fact that women themselves seek out these scenes at least twice as often as men do). He also warns against abuse of such knowledge: for example if liking motorcycles turns out to predict a lower IQ, should employers be allowed to reject applicants who admit to liking motorcycles? On the whole, however, he is optimistic and claims that humans will be able to learn a lot more about themselves in a lot less time.