Everybody Lies: The New York Times Bestseller

Lying to oneself may explain why so many people say they are above average. How big is this problem? More than 40 percent of one company’s engineers said they are in the top 5 percent.

Once we find the counterintuitive result, we can use more data science to help us explain why the world is not as it seems.

You would show up, however, in an area’s depression-related searches

At its core, data science is about spotting patterns and predicting how one variable will affect another. People do this all the time.

A major reason that Google searches are so valuable is not that there are so many of them; it is that people are so honest in them. People lie to friends, lovers, doctors, surveys, and themselves. But on Google they might share embarrassing information, about, among other things, their sexless marriages, their mental health issues, their insecuriti

Most of those enamored with Big Data gush about how immense these datasets can get. This obsession with dataset size is not new.

The notion that ads improve sales is obviously crucial to our economy. But it is maddeningly hard to prove. In fact, this is a textbook example of exactly how difficult it is to distinguish between correlation and causation.

But a moment’s reflection shows that the widespread use of porn—and the search and views data that comes with it—is the most important development in our ability to understand human sexuality in, well . . . Actually, it’s probably the most important ever.

With more understanding, we might find ways to reduce the world’s supply of nasty attitudes.