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Everybody Lies cover art

Everybody Lies

Written by: Seth Stephens-Davidowitz,Steven Pinker - foreword
Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
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Publisher's Summary

Blending the informed analysis of The Signal and the Noise with the instructive iconoclasm of Think Like a Freak, a fascinating, illuminating, and witty look at what the vast amounts of information now instantly available to us reveal about ourselves and our world - provided we ask the right questions.

By the end of an average day in the early 21st century, human beings searching the Internet will amass eight trillion gigabytes of data. This staggering amount of information - unprecedented in history - can tell us a great deal about who we are - the fears, desires, and behaviors that drive us and the conscious and unconscious decisions we make. From the profound to the mundane, we can gain astonishing knowledge about the human psyche that less than 20 years ago seemed unfathomable.

Everybody Lies offers fascinating, surprising, and sometimes laugh-out-loud insights into everything from economics to ethics to sports to race to sex, gender, and more, all drawn from the world of big data. What percentage of white voters didn't vote for Barack Obama because he's black? Does where you go to school effect how successful you are in life? Do parents secretly favor boy children over girls? Do violent films affect the crime rate? Can you beat the stock market? How regularly do we lie about our sex lives, and who's more self-conscious about sex, men or women?

Investigating these questions and a host of others, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz offers revelations that can help us understand ourselves and our lives better. Drawing on studies and experiments on how we really live and think, he demonstrates in fascinating and often funny ways the extent to which all the world is indeed a lab. With conclusions ranging from strange-but-true to thought-provoking to disturbing, he explores the power of this digital truth serum and its deeper potential - revealing biases deeply embedded within us, information we can use to change our culture, and the questions we're afraid to ask that might be essential to our health - both emotional and physical. All of us are touched by big data every day, and its influence is multiplying. Everybody Lies challenges us to think differently about how we see it and the world.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2017 Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers

What listeners say about Everybody Lies

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Totally worth the effort.

What this book is NOT:
- boring & dry diatribe about big data for stats nerds.
- a feeble attempt to validate a publishing contract with a purposeless research project.

What this book IS:
- a useful manual of human insights backed by quality research.
- the business person's building block to grow a business based on human behavior and not opinions.

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3 people found this helpful

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Love it but should be a bit more concise

Love the audiobook (I'm not lying!). Very interesting subject. However it could be a little shorter as some part tends to be repetitive.

I would definitely read/listen another book from this author.

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3 people found this helpful

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A few insights

There are a few insights that are interesting in this book. Mostly it is an ad for big Data.

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1 person found this helpful

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Best ending!

Great book! Would occasionally catch myself shouting at it about a sampling bias or about some other cringe-point noticeable only to the (allegedly) "overly" detail-oriented creatures of the world. But insightful, and enjoyable. Conclusion made me LMAO. haha!

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Very insightful and interesting

I think I'm now going to use George on Seinfeld's method of success....ignore my instincts and do the opposite.

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Data, data, data

This book presents lots of information culled from a lot of data. Some of it new to me, but most confirming what I already suspected or knew. Nevertheless, a very good listen.

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Build on ideas of other authors

Disagrees somewhat, big data cannot replace the value of intuition. The author was also not original with his main idea which was basically build on other published books for other author's

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Really Enjoyable and Informative

I found this really interesting. That being said I’m a bit of a geek who thinks a lot about process improvements and change. It was really insightful with a little humour thrown in to keep it from being too dry.

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Packed with interesting revelations and insights..

Enjoyed this primer on the real value in the mass of tracking data being held by some of the largest internet companies. Certainly makes me feel better about using these "free" services as the companies truely get a wealth of information from our participation.

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Insanely Enjoyable

Freakonomics meets big data. This book is a really thoughtful analysis of how to use data to understand our world and all of the people and decision makers in it. So many practical and just genuinely fun facts baked into this book! Perfect for anyone looking for a fun read that they might actually learn something from. #Audible1

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  • Shane Hampson
  • 2020-02-20

Leave out the politics please

The world is so full of politics, this book is no exception. I read books to get away from it. Whether you like Trump or you don't. This author has a bias against Trump. That's fine but why do you have to include it in the book? If it was all data based fine since that's what the book is about but lines like "take that Trump" is just childish and unneeded. Makes me questions his data since it is clearly slanted in at least one way.

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212 people found this helpful

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  • Angry Infidel
  • 2018-09-15

Unnecessary Trump Bashing

Kind of a boring book with a lot of liberal Trump bashing thrown in for no apparent reason. I would not recommend this book or, due to the author’s politically charged agenda, any other book by this author. He should have checked his political opinions at the door and focused purely on the topic at hand, not trying to spread his leftist ideology and take jabs at others.

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186 people found this helpful

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  • Larry V.
  • 2018-08-24

unbelievably biased data scientist

the author even tells you right up front that he's completely biased in his thought patterns, and that only by studying Google searches is he able to step back and see he may be wrong in his assumptions.

he then uses Google searches with a biased filter that is obviously anto capitalist, anti Trump and anti USA to proclaim that everybody lies.

oh, but not the author. the author knows the REAL truth because he analyzed some Google searches to slant things to his perspective.

a disgusting book to read.

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151 people found this helpful

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  • Laura
  • 2017-08-09

Might be worth it to get the book

Overall, this audiobook has some interesting insights and explains methods clearly. However, there were a lot of visuals referenced that are lost in an audio-only version, so if this is a topic you're really interested in, probably best to get the book.

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  • Miroslav
  • 2017-06-22

Interesting but not flawless

Interesting book, easy to listen to. The problem is the author likes to jump to conclusions he can't substantiate. And he even knows it, as in some cases he explains how the data is not enough. And he still does it anyway.

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86 people found this helpful

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  • C. N. Dear
  • 2018-02-02

Disappointing

The gist of the beginning of the book...

“People in America often do google searches for the n-word, and since Donald Trump is such an avowed racist, that is why he was elected president.”

Some liberals will like this book. Some conservatives will hate it. But all those interested in reading/listening-to a book on technology and science will be disappointed!

I am returning this book.

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  • Amazon Customer
  • 2018-03-16

Possibly the worst book I’ve ever read...!

This is an entire book of junk science used to push the authors political opinions. I seriously want my money back...

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  • Justin Bieliever
  • 2017-07-26

Even as a liberal, this is liberal propaganda.

Absolutely baseless and fake. Uses words from data science and statistic to sound legit. It's not. Makes very quick causation relationships where they don't even exist in the first place. This author is fraud who sells himself as a reputable statistician. Absolutely horrifying book full of liberal propaganda (and IM LIBERAL and shocked by the author's false and disgusting attributions to things that aren't true. This is a scary book in that it sells fiction as fact, and the lack of correlation as causation (WTF). Regrettable purchase. Author should be ignored, avoided, and exposed for his fraud.

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58 people found this helpful

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  • Joe C.
  • 2017-05-30

Good, but not Freakanomics great

I very much enjoyed this audiobook, but I was a little disappointed because he did not live up to the personal expectation I had after having heard the author in a handful of podcasts. I was under the impression the book was going to be filled with an endless amount of conclusions drawn from Big Data. instead, the audiobook is predominantly a polemic in favor of the use of big data sprinkled with little bits of information.

Still, I very much enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone I know.

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  • Paul
  • 2018-06-16

Total BS

This book is just another example of the liberal bias that lumps everything into racism and discrimination it is a despicable example of rewriting history

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  • Client d'Amazon
  • 2019-07-19

Very interesting and well narrated

This book reveals many interesting facts about our lives that we commonly ignore about ourselves. The writer put a lot of effort in stating accurate data by putting things into perspective and looking at it from different points of view.
Moreover, the story is told with humor and lightness.

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  • Pierre Gauthier
  • 2019-01-01

Mind Opening!

In this fascinating book, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz vividly succeeds in demonstrating the pertinence of using big data and in outlining the tremendous future positive impacts it should have in social sciences.

The examples he brings up are wide-ranging, from the impact of racism on US presidential election results to the factors affecting the future performance of race horses or baseball players. Indeed, at times, the text appears almost disjointed, a consequence perhaps of bringing together data from a certain number of the newspaper columns he has written in the New York Times.

The writing style is at once generous, personal and warm. Though the author makes multiple references to his personal situation and to his family, these somehow are never excessive nor aggravating. He succeeds as promised in producing a witty conclusion, “with a twist”.

It must be underscored that the text is specifically adapted for the audiobook version, in full respect of the times and of listeners. In addition, a PDF “enhancement” presenting various graphs, tables and illustrations is graciously included with the purchase.

Overall, this synthetic and substantial offering is warmly recommended to all interested in current intellectual developments.

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