The Numerati

By: Stephen Baker

Narrated by: Richard Powers

Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

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 21st century, a savvy group of mathematicians and computer scientists is beginning to sift through this data to profile us as workers, shoppers, patients, voters, potential terrorists, even lovers. 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 the people controlling that world.

©2008 Stephen Baker (P)2008 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"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, Wired magazine)

Corporations hunt us through the forests of number

An eye-opener, and easy to understand and listen to, which cannot be said about all audiobooks on numbers. The author shows how Big Data is being collected on each and all of us, constantly, implacably, all sliced and diced for commercial purposes. Data is collected ceaselessly on us collectively and (chillingly) as individuals, and sold to many eager commercial customers. Corporations target ads to us; dating sites limit our choices based on our statistics and their proprietary theories; medical care is based on statistics, not us; blogs are all analyzed in every detail by Numerati because they reveal so much about the writer.

Baker enlivens his books with his travel tales as he collects the information about the Big Data revolution in American commerce, and with details from his life, which is charming and does make the numbers go down with a spoonful of sugar. I found myself listening for hours at a time, and I don't usually do that with nonfiction. I recommend this book as fascinating and entertaining ----- and it's just as well we know what is going on as we all become numbers to manipulate by big business.

Interesting Overview of the Topic

While I wasn't riveted to the content, I certainly wasn't board and learned a thing or two along the way. If you want to get into this genre, its a good place to start.

Eye Opening!

Understanding how we live on the internet opens doors to infinate possibilities for marketing. The studies outlined in this books will continue to revolutionize how and why we purchase products, vote, love and basically live. The author does a great job in explaining complex ideals and formulas, helping the reader (listener) visualize these concepts and understand how thier daily activities inpact the global society.

Numerous Reasons to Read

Highly recommended. Baker's The Numerati reports on how the growth of large-scale databases and sophisticated analytical techniques are remaking politics, business, health care and government. An excellent companion piece to Ian Ayres book " Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way To Be Smart. Ayers is a member of the Numerati (and come to think of it - sort of surprising that he is not profiled in Baker's book) where Baker is a journalist. The books taken together help round out the picture on rapid growth of data and evidence based decision making.

Big Data for Humans

The Numerati examines the bright side, the dark side, and most importantly the human side, of big data.

Having read Big Data, Super Crunchers, The Signal the Noise, Naked Statistics and The Numerati somewhat recently I liked The Numerati the best by a significant margin.

The author is not a supercruncher, which I think was a good thing. Baker keeps humanity always in scope while investigating the details of big data. Even though Baker is not a supercruncher, I found this the most technically interesting of the books, delving into multivariate vector spaces without getting bogged down in equations or just telling stories. Each time a bit of technical information was presented, how that technology would impact people was also thoughtfully considered. I also felt I learned more about the subject from The Numerati than all the other books combined.

Baker uses examples that are more realistic and representative than several of the other books on the subject. The narration is clear and good, adding emphases or emotion quite nicely, but for some reason the frequency range of the reader’s voice grated on me at first and took some getting used to but after a few hours it was fine.

A good Start

This is old data now but if you have never been exposed to this information its a good intro. It is now 2020 and it is interesting that the models to predict elections are still as flawed as they were in 2008.

Good but not the best of the genre

This is a book about the existence and contemporary use of data in todays world. The amount of data being gathered each moment is staggering. What is purchased, what people are searching for on google, where people are going, what they are reading etc. This has spawned the practice of using such data to make predictions of what is to happen - what we will be interested in, what we will but, where we will go etc. The people who do this analysis are called the numerati.

It is a very interesting read but there are two other books, Supercrunchers and the Drunkard's Walk that address this same phenomena in different and better ways. All three books demonstrate how this data is used and how one could take advantage of it.

The Numerati want to model you

"The Numerati" is an exploration of the ways math and data are influencing the world, and what that might mean for business and for our privacy.

I thought one of the most interesting takeaways is that number-crunchers are working toward a world in which each real human can be modeled electronically, representing a multitude of characteristics. This model will be used to predict how the person will behave in various contexts -- economic, social, political, medical."

Fascinating way to look at detail

Author takes a challenging topic and makes it understandable to every one. Reader is excellent and is a good match to the material.
At this time of turbulent change, it is very thought provoking on how business and management could evolve.

Balanced Warning and Possibilities

Great book with comfortable narrator. The story that Baker provides is one of growing science of data analysis in various sections of our lives. The description of the complexity of drawing meaningful linkages in premptive terrorist identification leaves a curious mix of encouragement and frightening anxiety over predicting a repeat of September 11th. Later chapter on medical research in variety of illnesses that inflict our own aging process is also encouraging, while incorporating a brief discussion of efforts to identify "dark cutter" steers before investing the continuing costs to raise a low profit calf, all with the use of similar electronic data gathering as those which will help warn of oncoming development of Parkinsons in a family member.

A good collection about the pace of development and variety of future applications of the "numerati" professionals who are sifting and gleaning among our everyday activities which we hardly notice. Maybe all of HAL's brethren were not disconnected in 2001 ?