A New York Times Bestseller An audacious irreverent investigation of human behavior-and a
first look at a revolution in the making Our personal data has been used to spy on us hire
and fire us and sell us stuff we don't need. In Dataclysm Christian Rudder uses it to show us
who we truly are. For centuries we've relied on polling or small-scale lab experiments to
study human behavior. Today a new approach is possible. As we live more of our lives online
researchers can finally observe us directly in vast numbers and without filters. Data
scientists have become the new demographers. In this daring and original book Rudder
explains how Facebook "likes" can predict with surprising accuracy a person's sexual
orientation and even intelligence how attractive women receive exponentially more interview
requests and why you must have haters to be hot. He charts the rise and fall of America's most
reviled word through Google Search and examines the new dynamics of collaborative rage on
Twitter. He shows how people express themselves both privately and publicly. What is the least
Asian thing you can say? Do people bathe more in Vermont or New Jersey? What do black women
think about Simon & Garfunkel? (Hint: they don't think about Simon & Garfunkel.) Rudder also
traces human migration over time showing how groups of people move from certain small towns to
the same big cities across the globe. And he grapples with the challenge of maintaining privacy
in a world where these explorations are possible. Visually arresting and full of wit and
insight Dataclysm is a new way of seeing ourselves-a brilliant alchemy in which math is made
human and numbers become the narrative of our time.
