I have written before about my complicated relationship with data over the years: an evolution from hate to tolerance to ultimate appreciation. I am as surprised as anyone that I elected fully of my own accord to read a book about data but really, really enjoyed it.
Christian Rudder is one of the co-founders of OkCupid, so he has pretty unparalleled access to enormous amounts of data, allowing for some pretty wild interpretations of information. The sub-subtitle (go with it) of the book really gets to it- the data shows exactly who we are…when we think no one is looking. Rudder is able to touch on so many different things about lives and the importance- or lack of importance- of preferences.
Most interesting to me was an early chapter about linguistics and Twitter/texting. Rudder’s observations and information put so much in context. For example, he predicts that in the next two years (from September 2014), more words will be written on Twitter than in all books ever printed. That’s crazy! And lest you think that’s making us all regress in writing, he points out that style doesn’t change among mediums- “you write how you write, wherever you write.” Pretty cool to think about the fact that, as Rudder states, Twitter is really a “writer’s world”- so much opportunity to share thoughts and ideas.
This one’s taken me a little longer to write about for a couple of reasons. It took me a teensy bit of extra time to read it (let’s say I underestimated my timeframe on Saturday’s National Readathon Day), but I was definitely still reeling to some degree from Still Alice. The books could not be more different and they’ll both stick with me in different ways.
You’ll like this if: you like data…or if you want to like data. Like Freakonomics, Dataclysm takes big ideas and applies them to reasonable, real life scenarios.
Happy reading!
carlyreads 