Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.483
EAN: 9780618784608
Edition: 1
ISBN: 0618784608
Label: Houghton Mifflin
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: August 12, 2008
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Studio: Houghton Mifflin

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
"Steve Baker puts his finger on perhaps the most important cultural trend today: the explosion of data about every aspect of our world and the rise of applied math gurus who know how to use it." --Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine (Wired Magazine )

An urgent look at how a global math elite is predicting and altering our behavior -- at work, at the mall, and in bed

Every day we produce loads of data about ourselves simply by living in the modern world: we click web pages, flip channels, drive
through automatic toll booths, shop with credit cards, and make cell phone calls. Now, in one of the greatest undertakings of the twenty-first century, a savvy group of mathematicians and computer scientists is
beginning to sift through this data to dissect us and map out our next steps. Their goal? To manipulate our behavior -- what we buy, how we vote -- without our even realizing it.

In this tour de force of original reporting and analysis, journalist Stephen Baker provides us with a fascinating guide to the world we're
all entering -- and to the people controlling that world. The Numerati have infiltrated every realm of human affairs, profiling us as workers,
shoppers, patients, voters, potential terrorists -- and lovers. The implications are vast. Our privacy evaporates. Our bosses can monitor and measure our every move (then reward or punish us). Politicians can find the swing voters among us, by plunking us all into new political groupings with names like "Hearth Keepers" and "Crossing Guards." It can sound scary. But the Numerati can also work on our behalf, diagnosing an illness before we're aware of the symptoms, or even helping
us find our soul mate. Surprising, enlightening, and deeply relevant,
The Numerati shows how a powerful new endeavor -- the mathematical modeling of humanity -- will transform every aspect of our lives.

STEPHEN BAKER has written for BusinessWeek for over twenty years, covering Mexico and Latin America, the Rust Belt, European technology, and a host of other topics, including blogs, math, and nanotechnology. But he's always considered himself a foreign correspondent. This, he says, was especially useful as he met the Numerati. "While I came from the world of words, they inhabited the symbolic realms of math and computer science. This was foreign to me. My reporting became an anthropological mission." Baker has written for many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Boston Globe. He won an Overseas Press Club Award for his portrait of the rising Mexican auto industry. He is the coauthor of blogspotting.net, featured by the New York Times as one of fifty blogs to watch.




Rating: - Numerati review
[[ASIN:156726217Imagine that you are hiking through the woods, as you move through the trail you leave behind a series of clues that a tracker could follow and interpret. If the tracker was skillful enough they would be able to accurately estimate you weight, height, speed, and perhaps even determine where you are heading. Back at your home, you leave a similar sort of trail daily as you go about your normal routine: buying groceries, shopping online, reading blogs, surfing the internet. This is ... Read More

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Rating: - Journalist scared by math, writes content-free book
The science of data-mining is gaining in sophistication, but don't look to this book for any real understanding. Baker has written a book containing very little actual information content. He does not even attempt to convey how these techniques work or what their limitations are. Instead he paints a picture of a sinister and not-too-human "Numerati" that is handling our data while spurning basic social skills. It's a comic book plot that takes the place of any actual factual information. All ... Read More

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Rating: - Quants are measuring humanity!
IBM, Google, Accenture, Carnegie Mellon, Intel, Mayo Clinic used mathematical models to do data mining on consumer patterns. The book is an easy read. You do not need any mathematical or quantitative background.

Yes, data modeling and data mining existed for many years. Modeling human behavior to find the niche in marketing, remain to be the research processes that these companies are working on.

For years, marketing is being creative, trying to design the best ad ... Read More

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Rating: - Horrible!
This book was not only boring, I also didn't learn anything at all. I really struggled to get through this book, and thought many times about just giving up. I wish I had just given up and stopped reading it after the first few pages. It is also written in such a pretentious style - whoever uses the work "confrere" these days? Do yourself a favor and buy something else.

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Rating: - They Have Your Number
It may be that you have a "shopper's card" at your local grocery; you hand it to the teller as you check out, and the computer registers, besides what the total is and how the store's inventory will need to be restocked, just what the purchases were for you as a specific individual shopper. Maybe it will mail you some coupons on items it can tell you will be interested in, based on what you have already bought. Not too interesting, not too challenging for the computer, not too intrusive. But what ... Read More

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