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 you come away with is the idea that Baker is scared of what mathematicians are doing. 90% of the book is fluff.

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 that sells. With quants marching in the room, marketing is very different today. This book will be better if more data or analysis can be presented.

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.

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 will happen when you get a smart cart at the store? That's one that will welcome your insertion of your shopper's card, and then tell you what your shopping list usually looks like so you don't forget anything, where today's bargains are (in other words, what the store manager is trying to offload), and the fastest route through the aisles so you can get everything you need. If this sounds like it could be a useful tool for you, and also sounds a little creepy because of all the information the store (and the cart) knows about you, it's just the beginning. You may well want to see what else those who are mining your personal information are up to by reading _The Numerati_ (Houghton Mifflin) by Stephen Baker. Baker is a business journalist who wants to let us know about a new reach of mathematics into our lives. There are no equations here, just stories of the mathematicians and computer geeks that use them to find and exploit patterns of our day-to-day existence. Baker has cast some light onto many facets of an arcane realm of number crunchers, and has written a book that is entertaining and often disconcerting.

You can decide that you do not want to have a shopper's card. You can also decide that you do not want a cell phone, you never want to purchase anything on a credit card, or you do not wish to use an internet search engine. If you do volunteer for such activities, the Numerati have you. You cannot help but leave a digital trail. Most of Baker's chapters involve his looking into a particular realm of number crunching, interviewing the geeks and mathematicians who are involved, describing what has been done so far, and explaining the prospects for the not-too-distant future. Perhaps the brightest prospects for data mining are medical. Patients will do nothing extra to deliver information; it will just be monitored passively. Imagine a bed equipped with sensors that would tell how many hours we are actually spending in it, or how much tossing or turning we do, or how many times we get up for a bathroom break and how much fluid is lost on each such trip. Maybe there will be magic carpet on the floor of an elderly patient's house; it could register weight gain, or a new peculiarity in gait, or a fall, or even if the patient has stopped moving around the house during the day.

Privacy concerns are valid; it remains to be seen how much each of us will have to re-think what privacy actually means. There could also be moral questions involved; if you could make a mathematical model of a pedophile, and your church or school screens job applicants using such a model, and the screen says a candidate is an 85% fit, what is the right thing to do (and, an entirely separate question, what will be the thing to do to minimize legal liability)? And that percentage fit - it's going to be what any Numerati have to put up with, because any prediction or pattern can only indicate not reality, not truth, but mere probability. Several of the boffins interviewed here say that as complicated as are the mathematical algorithms to turn people into data, the math is the easy part; it's the humans that are hard to figure out. It is surprising, too, how simple tasks are actually monumental; terrorist watch lists of mere names present a nightmare, as any non-terrorist traveler who has a similar name will tell you. Internationalizing such data is a horrendous task; the Chinese alone, for instance, spell Osama Bin Laden eleven different ways. Baker's brightly-written and enthusiastic book presents pleasing pictures of how our numbers will come up in the future, and emphasizes those without neglecting to mention the darker issues of data misuse. He even did his own little experiment that verified something information techs have known since the most primitive of electronic computers. He and his wife filled out questionnaires at a dating site, and were dismayed that the computer did not point them in each other's direction as potential matches. It turns out that Baker had mistakenly excluded women of his wife's age. The verification: garbage in, garbage out.

The Numerati contains a wealth of very nice examples of the ways in which fast and ubiquitous computer chips along with improved software and data mining techniques will affect us (mostly for the good).

Quantitative profiling of human behavior ranges from the beneficial (recommendation engines for books and movies) to the scary (employer and police monitoring), and everything in between. "Numerati" provides a journalistic introduction to this topic, that is easy to read and understand. I found it way too simplified, though:

1. The author treats this technology as a "black box" which makes it seem almost miraculous to the uninitiated reader. The first requirement in writing about any technology is to explain what it can and can't do; the book does not provide enough information about this.

2. Like all technology it has both good and bad uses (and most uses are good in some ways and bad in other ways), but the book does not provide enough information about the social and policy tradeoffs inherent in its development, use, and regulation.

In summary, the book provides a readers with a very basic introduction to the brave new world of statistical profiling, but doesn't explain enough about the technology or its consequences to be really satisfying.

For anyone who works in digital marketing, internet advertising, online marketing, etc., (I fall into all of those categories and have since the mid-90's), this is a delicious read. Baker lets us peer into the minds and business models of what are essentially mathematical probability companies. It's a highly engrossing read, made more so for me personally since I know one of the data wizards referenced in the book. What I also like about the book is that it lets you draw your own conclusions on topics such as privacy without overly burdening the reader with a dogmatic point of view. All in all, I would (and have) recommend this book to a friend or ten in the "business" and really for anyone who has a passing interest in the implicit and explicit categorization of our lives. I can't wait to see what Baker tackles for his next book.

I became interested in this book after reading the companion cover story in BusinessWeek. Although the stories and interviews were interesting, I thought the book fell short on connecting the math beyond the most basic concepts.

Baker admits he was a liberal arts major in college and doesn't pretend to fully understand the math behind the analysis. Obviously, an in-depth mathematical discussion would have been beyond the grasp of most readers and presumably the author. However, a little more detail on the methodologies beyond the simplistic descriptions would have given the book more substance and utility.

Data Mining and Data Warehousing have been around for many years. Retailers have used it extensively to understand their customers. Yet, Baker fails to discuss these established practices and compare them with this new emerging area.

Baker spends most of his book describing the people he interviews in a series of stories. The book is an easy read and is entertaining. If you read for entertainment and are interested in this subject, you will probably like this book. However, if you read for knowledge and are looking for a good, informative business book on this subject, it may disappoint you.

As a graduate student in the social sciences studying human behavior, I often struggle to communicate what it is that I do to others in an approachable way. In other words, how do I convey to people how I go from the math/statistics I spend all day working with to the concepts/phenomena I am presumably actually studying? Baker does this for me. The next time I get a quizzical look at a cocktail party I am just going to refer the person to this book and move on to talking about sports.

As others have pointed out, this book is a comprehensible not comprehensive review of what it is that the numerati are actually involved in. It's strengths are it it's ability to illustrate the doors that are being unlocked and the conclusions that can be drawn from massive data analysis.

But it does more than that. It seems that the numerati spend more time thinking in equations than they do in implications. Baker pulls the potential consequences of our not so private but data rich lives into the larger dialogue of marketing, politics, healthcare, etc. Baker forces us (and hopefully some of the numerati) to examine the potential outcomes of looking at all this information. This book really makes you think about the ethics and theory behind large scale unprotected data analysis. Sure a company/website may guarantee that they will never "sell" your information to anyone else, but what are THEY going to do with it? And that isn't even accounting for all the information they are collecting without your knowledge.

What the numerati need to realize is that they are no longer only working in the math field; they have entered into the domain of philosophy. The thing is though, philosophical questions can't be solved with a proof. Baker is keen to this and his book is a welcome introduction to these issues.

As the chief marketing officer of Fair Isaac, I work daily with many of the Numerati that Stephen Baker so elegantly describes. However, I do not subscribe to the idea that all quantification and normalization of consumer data carries a nefarious purpose. Indeed, the societal value and impact of a given technology is generally determined by how this technology is applied and not by the technology itself.

As an example, Fair Isaac applies statistical analysis to the granting and administration of loans by establishing a standard credit scoring service (www.myfico.com). This quantitative approach, as pointed out by Stephen Baker, enables equal opportunity banking by not discriminating on the basis of anything but numbers. Another benefit is the empowerment of consumers who can now directly monitor the health of their credit by subscribing to this service. It may even entice someone to go on a credit diet!

In a global and connected economy the usage of well designed algorithms applied across vast data sets can help greatly in improving transparency and accountability.

The Numerati by Steve Baker really gets one thinking about the power of the data trails that we leave behind us at every step and click. While I started to get a bit paranoid reading "The Worker" chapter, I was hopeful during "The Patient" chapter and finished the book with a smile reading "The Lover" chapter. (The other chapters were engaging as well.)

This was a very readable, informative and enjoyable book. It provides plenty of interesting -- even poignant -- anecdotes AND hard facts. Steve Baker explains the math and numbers aspect of what is happening all around us with clarity and humor. (Love the spitball story.)

I picked up this book after reading a review for it in the Economist. It was an enjoyable read, though i wish that it got more specific at times. Would recommend to anyone that wants to put a toe in the world of data mining.

Well worth the price of admission. The contribution is not so much in the reminder that we are in a data-rich information age and the tech-heads rule the world; we've known that for at least a decade (And have had plenty of time to prepare). I found useful and entertaining the broad archetypal sweep of the book, from Blogger to Lover; the data story is fully conveyed in its social and psychological context.THE NUMERATI is also helped by personalizing the narrative. The author uses notables such as Dave Morgan (Founder of Tacoda and impressive to say the least)to help carry and intepret the story. THE NUMERATI is about "towering complexities." It's also a very good read.

I found this book so interesting. I had no idea how much information I was giving out on a weekly basis. After having read the book, I noticed that when I signed up for something on the internet they wanted me to answer 5 of their preselected questions. It used be one and you could always use the same question and answer but I can see they are trying to find out more info on me like where I went to school, and on it goes.
I think big brother is definitely here or else you can't have a credit card, shop on line etc.

I really enjoyed the way he presented the information since I am not a technical person or a math wizard. The book was easy to read and written in a personal, interesting style.

I found this book so interesting. I had no idea how much information I was giving out on a weekly basis. After having read the book, I noticed that when I signed up for something on the internet they wanted me to answer 5 of their preselected questions. It used be one and you could always use the same question and answer but I can see they are trying to find out more info on me like where I went to school, and on it goes.
I think big brother is definitely here or else you can't have a credit card, shop on line etc.

I really enjoyed the way he presented the information since I am not a technical person or a math wizard. The book was easy to read and written in a personal, interesting style.

In terms of delivery etc., all that stuff was on time and as promised. The book itself is quite good but repetitive and, in some way, if you keep reading from newspapers and magazines often, then it offers little new.

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.

Reading Baker's well-written and insightful book dispels any notion that numeracy is not necessary to fathom the 21st century.

Probably a book about interesting topics. I say "probably" beasuse I was unable to read it. Book is written in childishly infantile style that is appropriate for kindergarden kids. I made many attempts to read this book - from the beginning, form the end, from the middle. Sorry. Facts are hidden in jumble-mumble

In this informative book we are introduced to a new breed of mathematicians, "the numerati", who are responsible for gathering loads of private information individuals provide when they use a credit card, donate to a cause, surf the Internet, or even make a phone call.

The book's chapters include:

1. Intro
2. The Worker
3. The Shopper
4. The Voter
5. The Blogger
6. The Terrorist
7. The Patient
8. The Lover
9. Conclusion

This book is so so interesting. I especially enjoyed the chapters on Shoppers and Bloggers. One firm in New York analyzes data from web searches, and gathers some 20 billion behavioral clues on internet users each day. I also learned about an interesting Blog search engine, how political consultants target particular voters, and so much more. This non fiction book is highly recommended.

In a nutshell, The Numerati is an expose on the "global math elite" that have a massive influence upon us by predicting and altering our behavior in most everything we do.

Here's how it works:

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. But now there is a group of mathematicians and computer scientists that search through this data to dissect our habits and predict what consumers will do next. Well, not just consumers, it's also how we vote!

The author is a journalist and he provides us with a fascinating guide to the influence of the numerati in the world we live in. 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 all sounds a bit scary, but he makes the case that The Numerati can also work on our behalf, such as diagnosing illness or helping someone to find their soul mate. It's a fascinating book that will make you think.

Another business book I devoured this week and recommend highly because it's had a big influence upon my work is Squawk!: How to Stop Making Noise and Start Getting Results

"The Numerati" features a number of interviews between Baker and various individuals leading research efforts into analyzing consumer data. Readers would easily be led into believing that a New Age is around the corner.

I can testify from experience (health care, education, prisoners, construction) that it's not so simple. There are just too many side issues that complicate situations (Baker does point out some of them) and/or negate/limit the value of findings. In addition, in some areas there is active resistance to such findings - education is the most glaring example.

Education priorities are now set according to making life easier and more profitable for educators, not improving pupil outcomes; educators are dead set against undermining their "gold mine." Similarly, physicians generally do not accept outcomes data - partly for good reasons (the data inputs are not as accurate as desirable), but mostly because they don't want light shown on their fiefdoms.

Meanwhile, simpler methods exist - eg. focus groups. Further, I was disappointed the Baker did not cover the Internet's existing powerful ability to guide pricing decisions by randomly/decision-aided quoting of different prices.

Bottom Line: "The Numerati" does provide an overview of current thinking in the areas of grocery shopping, possible crime and terrorist prevention, etc. However, NO information on the current value/usefulness of these techniques is provided - thus, potential practitioners receive little of value.

I would highly recommend reading Baker's book immediately before or after reading How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business by Douglas Hubbard. Baker would probably consider Hubbard one of the "numerati". Both authors talk about some of the specifics of the analysis methods (but moreso Hubbard) and both talk about the general trends and impacts (but moreso Baker).

Like his table of contents (which is simply worker, shopper, voter, blogger, terrorist, patient, lover), Baker's book is sweeping if a bit terse in places. As a quant, I find Numerati an easy read with virtually no math but still enlightening even for the most quantitatively adept reader. There were several examples in Baker's book where I already knew of the mathod but had not heard of that application. He did some great research and covered a lot of topics in this giant and elaborate field of work.

My main concern for many management-level readers of this book is that in some cases Baker gives a reader just enough information to think they can apply it to a similar problem they have, falling into the "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" trap. Again, this can be offset with a read of Hubbard's book. It might also have been helpful to talk about the rise of "crackpot rigour" in a world with lots of data and relatively few competent mathematical analysts (various "data mining" experts come to mind).

In all, its one of my favorite reads of the year. I felt like someone was finally casting light on my own obscure field.

Steve Baker has written a page-turner that illuminates a world invisible to all but a few who understand the depths to which the digital world is shaping every aspect of our society. The "Numerati" -- those mathematical wizards and computer engineers to whom I paid little notice 30 years ago when I was in college -- are now the entrepreneurs and visionaries whose expertise is at work deciphering everything we do and even think. The Numerati's complex search methods known to those who took calculus in high school as "algorithms" are used every day by public and private sector entities to intrepret the vast amounts of data we all voluntarily put in the public domain every time we use our phones, credit cards and go "on-line." The story Baker tells of how the "Numerati" have insinuated themselves into every aspect of our economic and national life is compelling and and at times frightening. Every cell and land-line phone call, on-line communication, credit card purchase and daily email we send is part of an exponentially growing data base that's harvested not just for benign social and economic research, but highly targeted consumer marketing, politcal persuasion and outreach, business management and oversight of employees, as well as for govermernmental scrutiny of potentially suspicious activity. Baker's groundbreaking book tells in layman terms how the "Numerati" mine our data to determine who we are and what we do with our lives. Every single action we take using every day technology adds to a vast data base of information that is ripe for interperation not remotely imaginable in the analog world -- the four-TV channel and dial-phone universe in which I grew up as a kid in the 1960's and 1970's. As one of the "Numerati" notes in this book, this vast data base of information we voluntarily give up about ourselves is going to expand inexorably. Nothing will stop this juggernaut of information and the growing technological capacity to mine it. The genie is out of the bottle. Drawing on his skills as a journalist covering technology for more than two decades for Business Week Magazine, Baker introduces us to a Brave New World with great possibilities as well as potential perils. This is a gripping read: The three chapters covering politics, terrorism and medicine alone are worth the price of the book. There is much that is good and exciting about this new world, as it is putting information to use for us that expands our choices and improves our quality of life. But at the same time, the Numerati have the power and capacity to manipulate and reinforce our behavior as well as peer into our private lives. While this technological wizardry may well identify dangerous activity and potential terrorist threats, it also may invade our privacy in fundamental ways. "The Numerati" captures the dawn of a new era in which information is not simply power, but possibly all-controlling and potentially at odds with the values of a democratic society. Baker's ability to describe the new "search" technology and the experts that harness it makes for a compelling read, but it leaves the reader with more questions than answers. Is this technology and its accelerating capacity to scrutinize our daily activities outpacing our ability to regulate this new world so that our democratic and constitutional values are protected? The challenge of this new era, not so subtly raised by this extraordinary book, is whether this new technological revolution is going to control us or whether we will control it. To invoke a well worn book cover cliché: Run don't walk, to buy this book" -- and pay with cash if you want to keep your purchase private -- so you can decide for yourself.

A couple years ago, a friend's advice that I "skip the physics theory parts" enabled me to thoroughly enjoy Walter Isaacson's biography of Albert Einstein. So I was prepared to jump over the "math part" of Steven Baker's Numerati but was happy to discover that even the math-averse can enjoy this contemporary look at some of the country's geekiest numbers jocks and the work they are doing. Rather, the book is a tight narrative exploring the personalities behind some of the most ambitious number-crunching projects imaginable: data mining to discover ways to solve healthcare challenges, find terrorists or soul mates, or unlock the mysteries of the marketplace by analyzing the words used by bloggers. Really.

Baker's story-telling skill brings life to the zeroes and ones of these data masters. And marketers -- especially the metric-obsessed kind -- will find the book a great over-view of current thinking on the potential of what measuring the data related to our daily lives and actions can reveal.

Baker also points out the downside that occurs when people trade their privacy for convenience and customization. He echoes the concerns of privacy and civil liberty advocates (and science fiction authors) who warn us of the dark consequences of a society where all our actions are tracked and analyzed.

After reading how these elite numbers superstars are creating a world in which search engines will appear to know what we're seeking before we even know it, my only question is this: If these guys are so smart, how come the ATM I've been using for the past ten years hasn't figured out yet that I rather do the transaction in English rather than Spanish.

Stephen Baker, a technology writer for Business Week, takes us into the world of data miners, forecasters, and matchmakers. The math whizzes who analyze our blogs for trends, create the ads that make us eager to buy, and analyze the chatter that could conceal signs of criminal activity--these are the Numerati. Baker gives us a chapter each on work, shopping, politics, spy vs. spy, healthcare, and even Chemistry.com. (What does the length of your ring finger have to do with the kind of person you're attracted to? Read and find out.)

Some of it is "house-of-the-future" stuff--imagine, for instance, a floor tile that will alert the doctor when your aging parent's gait seems more hesitant that usual. According to Baker, experts watching old reruns of Michael J. Fox shows can detect characteristic signs years before he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

And then there's the political game. With ever-more-insightful analysis, political math mavens have found that (thank god!) America is nowhere near as polarized as you would expect. Many a liberal Democrat lurks in the McMansion suburbs, and vice versa. But politics is tough--your grocery basket doesn't lie, but nobody wants to give the time of day to a pollster. How they craft the exact political messages that will get you to the voting booth might, oddly enough, be related to your shopping habits.

Shopping--now this is a chapter that should be of interest to every die-hard Amazon fan. Sophisticated algorithms designed to deduce your taste in novels or music can be frighteningly accurate (or, as my Quick Picks occasionally remind me, maddeningly stupid, but that's the topic for a different book). After finishing this chapter, I could think of half a dozen things my grocery store knows about me that I never told them. If they chose to sell their data to magazine publishers, say, we would surely be targeted for the cooking mags ("Look, this family buys at least four units of different fresh herbs a week, and their weight in extra-virgin olive oil every month"). They can tell we have a teenager in the house ("Lots of Clean&Clear products") and could probably guess how old within a year or two ("Look it up--when did they quit buying diapers?"). Any health insurer would be interested in knowing that we spend a lot in produce and seafood, and very little at the meat counter--but what about those frequent trips to the candy aisle? It's a false positive, I swear--they're for the snack bar at my office!

You should be a little frightened, and more than a little fascinated, by The Numerati.

From: "The Corner Office" in the "INsights" section of Bnet.com, Sept. 3, 2008

By Peter Galuszka

The "Numerati" are an evolving class of quant-humping, algorithm experts who will be playing an enormous role in shaping our society, our economy and our lives. They are the types who founded Google and Yahoo but they are going beyond simple searching to manipulating and massaging the tremendous mass of data that we generate from Web clicks and cell phones.

Stephen Baker has written an engrossing, elegant little book (Houghton Mifflin) about the entire genre of data mining mathematicians who are at the controls of this revolution. It's been a while since I've read a business book this good, but I must disclose that Steve has been a colleague of mine off and on for 20 years. I have always admired his writing and analytic talent and his way of explaining things in ways that are both warm-hearted and wry.

Who are the Numerati? There's Samer Takriti, the Syrian-born math Ph.D. who works for IBM and is an expert at stochastic analysis, or trying to tie predictions to random seemingly events. M.I.T.-trained Frenchman Pierre Haren is a whiz at arranging that airplane passengers from mainland China and Taiwan don't bump into each other at Singapore's airport. And, there's Rayid Ghani, a Pakistani whose expertise is studying shopping behavior by examining lots and lots of receipts. These are just a few.

Non-techies such as myself can learn a lot from Steve's book. For instance, bargain-clipping shoppers who roam from store to store snapping up specials are called "barnacles" by data miners because they are useless drains on grocery chains which count their very slender profit margins in tens of a percentage point. In the political realm, there are "Right Clickers," who are conservatives who are so savvy with computers they instinctively click on the right side of a mouse and are prime candidates for Web-based fund raising.

And, if you have an elderly parent as I do, you might be interested to know that data miners are considering putting in linoleum kitchen floors filled with sensors that can reveal tell-tale signs of problems such as weight gain. If the gain is sudden, it can mean that the elderly one is retaining lung fluid because of heart malfunctions. Or, erratic patterns can signal the onset of Alzheimer's.

Steve visits the National Security Agency which has drawn criticism for collecting billions of data bits from e-mails and cell phone calls after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The problem, an NSA mathematician explains, is that while they can handle the massive data, it is really hard to match a name with a face, which is the sine qua non of snaring terrorists.

Some of the material is familiar as are some of the fears. Bosses can hover over us with an electronic clipboard threatening our personal privacy. Every single movement of our life can be tracked thanks to grocery loyalty cards and traffic toll payment devices.

There has been plenty written about the Data Big Brother controlling us. To Steve's credit, he doesn't fall victim to hyperventilating paranoia. He addresses the good and the bad that can come with the Numerati's growing ability to watch us and predict our next moves.

My only criticism is that the book is a little too short. I wanted Steve to draw even more detailed sketches of the individual Numerati. All in all, though, his book is excellent.

Read the blog post at:
http://blogs.bnet.com/ceo/?p=1321

I generally hate math, but The Numerati is written for people like me. It's a light journey through the data-driven world we live in and the world we will live in soon. If you think that math-generated things like amazon's "recommendations" are a cool feature of our modern world, well, you ain't seen nothin' yet. The Numerati answers some of the questions you may have wondered about and many that you hadn't thought of. All the while, you are entertained and pulled along by really great writing. For a non-fiction book, it's a page-turner. Enjoy!

Great read. The topic and the coverage are a big picture look at the way our world works that is fascinating but what would make me want to read anything Stephen Baker writes is his style. His writing is smooth, like a good song with lots of funny, quirky little observations that made me smile. My favorite part was about blogging, learned a great deal and was amused all along the way.