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Author Ben Goldacre exposes the epidemic of pseudoscience and gives listeners the tools they need to distinguish good science from nonsense.
How many self-help books are written by authors whose biggest success is selling self-help books? Three Simple Steps is different. Despite stock market crashes, dot-com busts, and the specter of recession, the author started a virtual company from home, using a few thousand dollars of his savings. A few years later, without ever hiring an employee or leaving his home office, he sold it for more than $100 million. As the economy slipped into another free fall, he did this again with a company in a different field. He accomplished this through no particular genius.
This audiobook provides fascinating insights into the hedge fund traders who consistently outperform the markets, in their own words. From best-selling author, investment expert, and Wall Street theoretician Jack Schwager comes a behind-the-scenes look at the world of hedge funds, from 15 traders who've consistently beaten the markets. Exploring what makes a great trader a great trader, Hedge Fund Market Wizards breaks new ground, giving readers rare insight into the trading philosophy and successful methods employed by some of the most profitable individuals in the hedge fund business.
Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle was old school and stubborn. But after 20 straight losing seasons and his job on the line, he was ready to try anything. So when he met with GM Neal Huntington in October 2012, they decided to discard everything they knew about the game and instead take on drastic "big data" strategies.
The best-selling author of Big Data is back, this time with a unique and in-depth insight into how specific companies use big data. Big data is on the tip of everyone's tongue. Everyone understands its power and importance, but many fail to grasp the actionable steps and resources required to utilise it effectively. This book fills the knowledge gap by showing how major companies are using big data every day, from an up-close, on-the-ground perspective.
How can we explain the origins of the great wave of paranoid hatreds that seem inescapable in our close-knit world - from American shooters and ISIS to Donald Trump, from a rise in vengeful nationalism to racism and misogyny on social media? In Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra answers our bewilderment by casting his gaze back to the 18th century before leading us to the present.
Author Ben Goldacre exposes the epidemic of pseudoscience and gives listeners the tools they need to distinguish good science from nonsense.
How many self-help books are written by authors whose biggest success is selling self-help books? Three Simple Steps is different. Despite stock market crashes, dot-com busts, and the specter of recession, the author started a virtual company from home, using a few thousand dollars of his savings. A few years later, without ever hiring an employee or leaving his home office, he sold it for more than $100 million. As the economy slipped into another free fall, he did this again with a company in a different field. He accomplished this through no particular genius.
This audiobook provides fascinating insights into the hedge fund traders who consistently outperform the markets, in their own words. From best-selling author, investment expert, and Wall Street theoretician Jack Schwager comes a behind-the-scenes look at the world of hedge funds, from 15 traders who've consistently beaten the markets. Exploring what makes a great trader a great trader, Hedge Fund Market Wizards breaks new ground, giving readers rare insight into the trading philosophy and successful methods employed by some of the most profitable individuals in the hedge fund business.
Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle was old school and stubborn. But after 20 straight losing seasons and his job on the line, he was ready to try anything. So when he met with GM Neal Huntington in October 2012, they decided to discard everything they knew about the game and instead take on drastic "big data" strategies.
The best-selling author of Big Data is back, this time with a unique and in-depth insight into how specific companies use big data. Big data is on the tip of everyone's tongue. Everyone understands its power and importance, but many fail to grasp the actionable steps and resources required to utilise it effectively. This book fills the knowledge gap by showing how major companies are using big data every day, from an up-close, on-the-ground perspective.
How can we explain the origins of the great wave of paranoid hatreds that seem inescapable in our close-knit world - from American shooters and ISIS to Donald Trump, from a rise in vengeful nationalism to racism and misogyny on social media? In Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra answers our bewilderment by casting his gaze back to the 18th century before leading us to the present.
New research has revealed that myelin, once considered an inert form of insulation for brain cells, may be the holy grail of acquiring skill. Journalist Daniel Coyle spent years investigating talent hotbeds, interviewing world-class practitioners (top soccer players, violinists, fighter, pilots, artists, and bank robbers) and neuroscientists. In clear, accessible language, he presents a solid strategy for skill acquisition.
In this groundbreaking new work, Mark Booth embarks on an enthralling intellectual tour of our world's secret histories. Starting from a dangerous premise - that everything we've been taught about our world's past is corrupted, and that the stories put forward by the various cults and mystery schools throughout history are true - Booth produces nothing short of an alternate history of the past 3,000 years.
What is human consciousness, and how is it possible? This question fascinates thinking people from poets and painters to physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. From Bacteria to Bach and Back is Daniel C. Dennett's brilliant answer, extending perspectives from his earlier work in surprising directions, exploring the deep interactions of evolution, brains, and human culture.
In this revolutionary look at the brain, best-selling author, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, M.D., introduces both the brilliant scientists championing this new science of neuroplasticity and the astonishing progress of the people whose lives they've transformed.
Introducing principles we can all use, as well as a riveting collection of case histories, The Brain That Changes Itself has "implications for all human beings, not to mention human culture, human learning and human history."
A major new biography of the Civil War general and American president, by the author of the New York Times bestseller A. Lincoln. The dramatic story of one of America's greatest and most misunderstood military leaders and presidents, this is a major new interpretation of Ulysses S. Grant. Based on seven years of research with primary documents, some of them never tapped before, this is destined to become the Grant biography of our times.
It is astonishing that Simón Bolívar, the great Liberator of South America, is not better known in the United States. He freed six countries from Spanish rule, traveled more than 75,000 miles on horseback to do so, and became the greatest figure in Latin American history. His life is epic, heroic, straight out of Hollywood: he fought battle after battle in punishing terrain, forged uncertain coalitions of competing forces and races, lost his beautiful wife soon after they married and died relatively young, uncertain whether his achievements would endure.
Go ahead, be skeptical about big data. The author was - at first. When the term "big data" first came on the scene, best-selling author Tom Davenport ( Competing on Analytics, Analytics at Work) thought it was just another example of technology hype. But his research in the years that followed changed his mind. Now, in clear, conversational language, Davenport explains what big data means - and why everyone in business needs to know about it.
Welcome to the Universe is a personal guided tour of the cosmos by three of today's leading astrophysicists. Inspired by the enormously popular introductory astronomy course that Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, and J. Richard Gott taught together at Princeton, this book covers it all - from planets, stars, and galaxies to black holes, wormholes, and time travel.
By the end of on average day in the early 21st century, human beings searching the Internet will amass eight trillion gigabytes of data. This staggering amount of information - unprecedented in history - can tell us a great deal about who we are - the fears, desires, and behaviors that drive us, and the conscious and unconscious decisions we make. From the profound to the mundane, we can gain astonishing knowledge about the human psyche that less than 20 years ago seemed unfathomable.
An extraordinarybook for anyone eager to understand the hidden motives that shape our lives. We are all storytellers—we create stories to make sense ofour lives. But it is not enough to tell tales; there must be someone to listen. In his work as a practicing psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz hasspent the last twenty-five years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our mostbaffling behavior. The Examined Life distills more than fifty thousandhours of conversation into pure psychological insight without the jargon.
If your business is like most, it is already generating a staggering amount of data on a regular basis. Understanding what this data truly means is key to succeeding in the marketplace these days and if you are looking for a way to give yourself an edge then Data Analytics is the book you have been waiting for. Inside you will find the tools you need in order to take full advantage of all of the data that your business is already generating.
It's a radical, provocative idea: We're not entitled to get offended or stay angry. The idea of our own "righteous anger" is a myth. It is the number-one problem in our societies today and, as Dallas Willard says, Christians have not been taught out of it.
Oxford professor and author Viktor Mayer-Schönberger joins Economist data editor and commentator Kenneth Cukier to deliver insight into the hottest trend in technology. "Big data" makes it possible to instantly analyze and draw conclusions from vast stores of information, enabling revolutionary breakthroughs in business, health, politics, and education. But big data also raises troubling social and privacy concerns sure to be a major talking point in the years ahead.
If you don’t know anything about big data, this might be a fine introduction to the subject, but for those who have not been living under a rock this was pretty light stuff. Big Data is a survey and brief history of big data, how it is being, and will be, used and finally some warnings about how big data could be abused. There are a few examples of how big data has been used effectively but there is not much in the way of details or deep analysis. The one exception was a lot of words spent worrying about big data and punishing people based upon predictions and the possible loss of personal responsibility and accountability. This was a little hyped for me. I learned more about big data from reading the Wikipedia entry. This was nicely narrated and largely mildly interesting.
67 of 68 people found this review helpful
The book itself illustrates its points with good stories and examples. There's really not that much to the story. Data exist and were getting more of it. Tools for analyzing it exist and they are getting better. We will use the data to our advantage when available. A full book to tell that story wasn't necessary.
We have more data and better tools to analyze them then ever before. That alone doesn't make us special as the theme of the book seems to tell us. That's as true today as well as everyday for the last 400 years or so. A lot our previous ways of thinking about the world were limited by the amount of data we had and the tools we had to analyze that data. Now days, because of the data and tools available, the what (i.e. correlation) can be more important than the how (i.e. causation) and decisions can proceed based on just the correlation and not necessarily understanding the reason for the causation. That doesn't mean we can ignore the how, but we don't always have to understand the reasons behind things when we look at all the data and see the correlations pop out. This is a big theme of the book.
A good narrator like this one makes a mediocre book good.
25 of 25 people found this review helpful
What did you love best about Big Data?
Every time you use a computer, scan your credit/debit card or loyalty card, or drive your car, Big Data is being collected about you - without your direct and specific permission and with no compensation to you. Big Data refers to the abundance of data that is collected on every person voluntarily and involuntarily, with and without their knowledge, every second of every day. It is available for relatively quick predictive analysis of just about everything we do. The abundance of data, its use and re-use, are transforming our world.
Can Google predict an outbreak of the flu? Can a car detect that a thief is behind the wheel? Can Apple really tell our biometrics through the use of their earbuds? The amazing answer is – yes! By correlating data from one place with the data from another, and maybe even another, companies can form an accurate picture of your needs and wants and present them to you for purchase. One interesting correlation of this data is drawing on the unrelated behaviors of the web sites a person visits and their hobbies, with their insurance premium. Or connecting credit reports and consumer marketing data with a person’s higher risk of having high blood pressure.
While collecting every bit of data about people seems invasive of our privacy, it saves lives and helps doctors treat people sooner. Analytics determined that preemies stabilize right before they encounter a crisis. I believe the recent revelation that our government has been collecting data of our phone calls is the latter element mentioned in the “burgeoning field” in the book as “network analysis,” where it is “possible to map, measure and calculate the nodes and links for everything from one’s friends on Facebook, to which court decisions cite which precedents, to who calls whom on their cellphones. Together these tools help answer non-causal, empirical questions.” Hurricanes can be predicted through the purchase of Pop-Tarts.
Data is painlessly collected by “seeing” how many cell phones are traveling on a highway to show real-time traffic patterns, or how many cell phones are gathered together to determine how many people showed up for a protest. Even our Tweets are sold and used to “garner aggregate customer feedback” or see if a marketing campaign is working. The innocent act of providing pictures and news on Facebook (and other social media) so our family and friends can share our joy is a voluntarily act of giving up our privacy so business (and government) can benefit from our thoughts, our pleasures, and those we “follow.”
Imperfect yet informative, Big Data’s usefulness has only just begun.
It was read to perfection, at a pace that made this sometimes incredible information, easier to grasp. I even set the reading rate faster than "1" many times, as it was written to be easily understood.
Once I started this book, it was really hard to stop. A good read about how the world is changing.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful
This was an interesting book about potential uses of new forms of data. It also includes many interesting stories and examples of data use in the past, present, and future. The book explains how data can be used in new ways to that will improve business and society. Massive amounts of data was once only captured by the Navy, Astronomers, and Scientists. Today, it is becoming a natural resource and is captured by nearly every business and by millions of devices around the world. With the emergence of social networking, reams of data have been stored about people and places. New data sources are starting to take shape. Data is now being captured by everything from home appliances to industrial machines. The harvesting, analyzing, reporting, and decision making that comes with these new forms of data is very exciting. This book is not for everyone, but as a software developer, I found this book to be very enjoyable.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful
This books provides an excellent overview of big data and examples where it's affecting our lives. It explains the difference between between "digitalization" (e.g., electronically booking your travel) and "datafication" (e.g., analysis of past flight data to predict the potential and duration of delays). The analysis of all data in all its form (good and messy) provides unexpected results. For example, a flight is more likely to be delayed longer due to fog than snow. Computing power and new processing techniques are allowing businesses to apply big data in all kinds of areas. For example, Google was able to track the spread of 2009 flu in real time, whereas prior to that the CDC took weeks. Google compared the most common search terms with CDC data. And through testing hundreds of mathematical models, found a combination of search terms that strongly correlated with official data. Our own behavior contributes to the use of big data. When we purchase items from Amazon, all of that metadata is stored and crunched. You're given recommendations based on what you purchased and what others making that same purchase had purchased in addition to that.
The potential of big data is both incredible and scary. Imagine traffic on every road is available in real time based people's cell phone signal as they are driving. There will be some accurate data (e.g., people in cars on the road) and some messy data (e.g., someone walking or standing on the sidewalk). New processing techniques know how to pick out the right set of data. To what extent will data be collected and used for purposes that we never anticipated?
7 of 9 people found this review helpful
Too many repetitions of explanations and example of the same concepts. The book could have been cut down to a quarter of its current size, and still be clear enough on what it is trying to convey.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
What made the experience of listening to Big Data the most enjoyable?
The real examples of Big Data application are very interesting. More and more data is being collected on all levels of our daily lives, and the computational power to process it increases consistently. The possibilities in the future are beyond our imagination today.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Big Data?
The example of Google managing to foretell epidemics in almost real time based on search terms is awesome!
Any additional comments?
As computers get more and more powerful, we will be able to use Big Data techniques to do amazing things, even at personal level. Imagine a personal assistant (like a smartphone) that "knows" what you're doing and anticipates your next moves based on data about your life it collects, privately, in real time. For example, you're talking about a possible trip to your wife and it tells you the best dates based on price, possibility of being away from work or school, weather forecast, availability of someone to take care of your dog, estimated availability of money at the time of the trip, etc. All in real time and without explicitly asking. You just need to say "book it!" at the end.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Would you listen to Big Data again? Why?
Yes. The book conveys the concept of BigData using some really interesting anecdotes.
What did you like best about this story?
Easy to understand structure and devoid of any fancy/confusing jargons.
What does Jonathan Hogan bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Easy to understand voice however not monotonic at the same time.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
Some of the BigData stories were truly surprising including the Google's H1N1 Flu story.
Any additional comments?
Really enjoyed listening to this book. I am planning to re-listen really soon and read the paper copy as well.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
If you are interested in the discussion of Big Data and how it impacts on society and the impacts to your Internet life, then i recommend this book.
What did you like best about this story?
The thought provoking discussion on the ability of Google to predict the spread of the flu
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Would you consider the audio edition of Big Data to be better than the print version?
I borrowed the book from library was enjoyable but quite dry and I did not finish reading it.
I really wanted to understand the what, why and how about Big Data, I turned to the audio version
It was 360 degrees entertainment. The most interesting and informative. The overall concept came alive and I am able to grasp the evolution of collecting, storing vast data. Full of insight.
Now I am going to buy the book in hard copy to use as reference and read the printed format to have a rock sold understanding Big Data.
What did you like best about this story?
History, background and lots of real life benefits fo Big Data especially N=ALL
I love data, statisticis and analysis so this book is perfect for me.
What does Jonathan Hogan bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?
Good voice tone, engaging and lively.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
The dark side of Big Data. Everything comes with a price, as long as we do not abuse the tool. Still I think the good over rides the not so good. Big Data is here to stay, we should enhanced it for overall good to bring peace and happiness to the world.
Any additional comments?
We need to have trust, love and care. Not everyone is bad just misguided. We also should respect one another's likes and dislikes.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
I really enjoyed this book. It gave really powerful insight into a world of data and how it is governing our lives.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Would you listen to Big Data again? Why?
I might listen to the first few chapters again to note down some of the examples and use them during my presentations.
What other book might you compare Big Data to, and why?
This is the first of the set of books that I am reading on Big Data.
Which character – as performed by Jonathan Hogan – was your favourite?
The story of the guy who joined Amazon to help people find books was very interesting.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes,but I was able to listen to this book in a week
Any additional comments?
This book demystifies Big Data and busts certain myths people may have about it. After reading the book you know what to expect from Big Data. May be a chapter on what to do next for people wanting to know more about Big Data and how to get started on it might have been helpful.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Would you listen to Big Data again? Why?
Yes there is so much information and a lot of actionable information. And it was rather interesting a lot of stories to tie you in.
This is a great book which highlights the importance of data and how its used throughout our lives.
What made the experience of listening to Big Data the most enjoyable?
Available on the go!
What did you like best about this story?
Great articulations and examples on Big Data
What about Jonathan Hogan’s performance did you like?
very clear and interesting (meaningful) voice modulation
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
no.. 1 hr max per sitting.. did will exercising
Any additional comments?
Great way to learn about topics.. especially the free trial feature is good.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful
Well structured. Well narrated. Some fascinating content. An excellent introduction to Big Data and its implications.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful