Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity--What Our Online Lives Tell Us about Our Offline Selves

A well-balanced, spherical approach on the data collected from Okcubid and some other sources in the last decade or so. Christian does an excellent job of not only presenting the statistics, but also explaining some of the norms, keeping an interesting storyline without adding too much personal opinion.

I am student of data science. I was searching for some thesis topics, that was the main reason for reading this book. It has opened my eyes, helped me to think differently about the social media data. It has no technical discussion but a intuitive way to show the analyzed result(That is what, i was looking for). Sometimes, those results are really interesting and made me think "aha! those results could not be found without analyzing the data".

Dataclysm gives interesting insights on how people decide and what they wish for when they believe nobody is watching. The results are sometimes amusing, sometimes shocking but mostly revealing, e.g. while women prefer men around their own age, men will always choose 20-year-olds – BUT while women answer that question with Mr. Right in mind, men just think of the next sexual encounter. OK, no real surprise here.As a European I find much of the data quite US-specific. It would be interesting to see cultural difference between continents and countries as well. A book certainly somewhat nerdy but worth exploring.