The Little Book of Data : Understanding the Powerful Analytics that Fuel AI, Make or Break Careers, and Could Just End Up Saving the World

Data is not about number crunching. It’s about ideas. And when used properly (read: ethically), it is the problem solver of our time. Yet many savvy people seem to be in data denial: they don’t think they need to understand data, or it’s too complicated, or worse, using it is somehow unethical.Yet as data and AI (just an accelerated way to put data to work) move to the center of professional and civic life, every professional and citizen needs to harness this power. In The Little Book of Data, each chapter illustrates one of the core principles of solving problems with data by featuring an expert who has solved a big problem with data-from the entrepreneur creating a “loneliness score” to the epidemiologist trying to save lives by finding disease “hotspots.”The stories are told in a fast-moving, vivid, sometimes comic style, and cover a wide frame of reference from adtech to climate tech, the bubonic plague, tiny submarines, genomics, railroads, bond ratings, and meat grading. (That’s