Product Description

In a world teeming with data, we ourselves become the math nerds' most prized specimens. In "The Numerati" Stephen Baker, a "Business Week" senior writer, takes us on a guided tour (no maths required) through an unprecedented new era, in which mathematicians are starting to map individual human behaviour - what we do, who we are, how we work, chat, play and shop - and in so doing, will change every aspect of our lives, from the kind of medical advice we get, to the adverts we see, to our appraisals at work, to the way politicians try to win our votes and protect us from terrorist attacks.There's the robotic librarian using a combination of algebra and geometry to analyse thousands of press articles and blog posts in English. Then there are the mathematicians helping to map out advertising campaigns, changing the nature of research in newsrooms and in biology labs, enabling marketers to forge new one-on-one relationships with customers. Baker asks the fundamental question: If long articles full of twists and turns can be reduced to a mathematical essence, what's next?Will the power of mathematicians to make sense of personal data and to model the behaviour of individuals inevitably erode privacy? More and more of the world economy is falling into the realm of numbers. "The Numerati" is a book about one of the great undertakings of the 21st century - the mathematical modelling of humanity. Much in the same way as neuroscientists are mapping our brains, mathematicians are mapping our individual behaviour - everything that makes the individual distinct. Stephen Baker navigates us through a world that otherwise might seem remote or disconnected, but one which is absolutely relevant to our everyday lives.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #294817 in Books
• Published on: 2008-11-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

Review
`Baker knows his stuff and knows his subjects' --Sunday Times

"written in a breezy journalistic style and it avoids sensationalism even when this must have been tempting"
--The Times

`Baker knows his stuff and he knows his subjects'. --Sunday Times

Review
`Baker paints an apocalyptic picture of a world teeming with data'

`Strikingly well-argued'

Review
This won't make you an expert on how mathematicians do their tricks, it will make you aware of the implications'

Customer Reviews

Targeting customers through their data trails
Companies, political parties, advertisers and individuals are harnessing the masses of data in our increasingly digitised world to know more about us than ever before. Businesses like Amazon and Google sift through our every click (and solicit our feedback) to find out more about us so they can customise what they sell us, both to keep us happy as customers and to increase their profits. Supermarkets use loyalty schemes to pinpoint their sales promotions to good prospects in increasingly elaborate ways. Political parties know who the floating voters are and what messages will make them vote for their policies. How do they do it, and what are the implications for our privacy? There are few technical details here, but this is a good introduction to the world of data mining.

Disappointing
This is well written journalism that concentrates on the numerati themselves. Nothing wrong with journalism per se (I was a journalist myself for some years), but there's a bigger story to be written about than this. I was hoping for a more insightful analysis of the techniques, implications and/or limitations of mathematical and statistical analysis being applied at massive scale on the world around us. But what the author delivered was a set of interesting anecdotes.

The Numerati - a Book
This is an interesting book but it does in essence repeat it basic premiss over and over again and one wonders what the point is after a while or what anyone might do about the fact that ones every click is recorded somewhere.