Seth Stephens-Davidowitz


Seth Isaac Stephens-Davidowitz is an American data scientist, economist, and author. He is a New York Times op-ed contributor and a former data scientist at Google, as well as a former visiting lecturer at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has published research using Google Trends search data, as well as data from Wikipedia and Facebook, to gain real-time insights into people's thoughts and beliefs that they may be unwilling to admit publicly.
His book Everybody Lies was published by HarperCollins in 2017. The book subsequently became a New York Times bestseller, and was named a book of the year by both PBS NewsHour and the Economist.

Biography

Stephens-Davidowitz was born on September 15, 1982 in Englewood, New Jersey into a Jewish family, son of Esther Davidowitz and Mitchell Stephens. He grew up in Alpine, New Jersey, and attended Tenafly High School in Tenafly, graduating in 1999. He went on to earn his B.A. in philosophy from Stanford University before enrolling at Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D. in economics in 2013.

''Everybody Lies''

Everybody Lies was published by HarperCollins in 2017. The book subsequently became a New York Times bestseller, and was named a book of the year by both PBS NewsHour and the Economist.
The overriding theme of the book is that people aren't as honest about their true natures when responding to standard questionnaires as they are when searching the internet, on the assumption that search is a private activity.
Of particular note is the empirical chapter, Chapter 4: Digital Truth Serum, derived from extensive Big Data analysis of search engine search histories on sensitive subject matters such as prejudice, violence, and sexuality.
The remainder of the book addresses the surrounding issues of methodology, epistemology, and moral philosophy.
; Table of contents
  1. Your Faulty Gut
  2. Was Freud Right?
  3. Data Reimagined
  4. * Bodies as Data
  5. * Words as Data
  6. * Pictures as Data
  7. Digital Truth Serum
  8. * The Truth About Sex
  9. * The Truth About Hate and Prejudice
  10. * The Truth About the Internet
  11. * The Truth About Child Abuse and Abortion
  12. * The Truth About Your Facebook Friends
  13. * The Truth About Your Customers
  14. * Can We Handle the Truth?
  15. Zooming In
  16. * What's Really Going On in Our Counties, Cities, and Towns?
  17. * How We Fill Our Minutes and Hours
  18. * Our Doppelgangers
  19. * Data Stories
  20. All the World's a Lab
  21. * The ABCs of A/B Testing
  22. * Nature's Cruel
  23. ::– but Enlightening
  24. ::– Experiments
  25. Big Data, Big Schmata? What It Cannot Do
  26. * The Curse of Dimensionality
  27. * The Overemphasis on What Is Measurable
  28. Mo Data, Mo Problems? What We Shouldn't Do
  29. * The Danger of Empowered Corporations