Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends

people who were far superior in predicting political and economic events, he found that they had a similar tendency to explore across data sources, looking for triangulation.

contrasts between people’s day-to-day lives and their unacknowledged or unmet desires,

outsiders often see a culture’s idiosyncrasies better than the natives.

“culture glasses,” a term that refers to the “lenses” through which we see our own countries.

Considering that 90 percent of what people give off in conversation are nonverbal signals, our truest identities can be found by studying who we are in our real lives, cultures and countries. This amalgamation of gestures, habits, likes, dislikes, hesitations, speech patterns, decors, passwords, tweets, status updates and more is what I call small

We desire whatever it is—the place, the person, the thing, the period in our lives—we’re convinced we’re lacking.

No matter how insignificant it may first appear, everything in life tells a story.

Do any of us really know how we come across to other people? Are we aware of the haphazard sequence of small data we leave behind us every day—the rituals, habits, gestures and preferences that coalesce to expose who we really are inside? Most of the time, the answer is No.

Leaping this far beyond the data would get a masters’ student in Anthropology a failing grade. But Martin is an explorer and raconteur, not a social scientist, so as a reader I am willing to forgive his excesses. And that’s easier to do because he so frequently manages to provoke his clients in new directions that are clearly better, as in the Room