4 stars
Christian Rudder is a cofounder of OKCupid and knows something about using data for matchmaking. Because the website asks so many questions of its users, he has access to a treasure trove of unique datasets. As someone with a degree in Sociology, I found this book fascinating. The information that Rudder gleans from this data (as well as data from other social networking sites) can be used to garner all sorts of information on how society sees race, relationships and beauty among other things. There is a chapter on internet bullying that is terrifying and makes me glad that I decided to forego Twitter for the most part. I can definitely see why so much access to our online lives might make some people extremely nervous but I also appreciate how it makes data sets more identical to our national make-up which studies done with real life people cannot usually accomplish. I did find some repetitiveness that slowed down my reading at times but overall this was a well-written accessible look at what online datasets can accomplish. I received this from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for an honest review.
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