Everybody Lies
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39 something like one in five reach the NBA: Pablo S. Torre, “Larger Than Real Life,” Sports Illustrated, July 4, 2011.
39 middle-class, two-parent families: Tim Kautz, James J. Heckman, Ron Diris, Bas Ter Weel, and Lex Borghans, “Fostering and Measuring Skills: Improving Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills to Promote Lifetime Success,” National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 20749, 2014.
39 Wrenn jumped the highest: Desmond Conner, “For Wrenn, Sky’s the Limit,” Hartford Courant, October 21, 1999.
39 But Wrenn: Doug Wrenn’s story is told in Percy Allen, “Former Washington and O’Dea Star Doug Wrenn Finds Tough Times,” Seattle Times, March 29, 2009.
40 “Doug Wrenn is dead”: Ibid.
40 Jordan could be a difficult kid: Melissa Isaacson, “Portrait of a Legend,” ESPN.com, September 9, 2009, http://www.espn.com/chicago/columns/story?id=4457017&columnist=isaacson_melissa. A good Jordan biography is Roland Lazenby, Michael Jordan: The Life (Boston: Back Bay Books, 2015).
40 His father was: Barry Jacobs, “High-Flying Michael Jordan Has North Carolina Cruising Toward Another NCAA Title,” People, March 19, 1984.
40 Jordan’s life is filled with stories of his family guiding him: Isaacson, “Portrait of a Legend.”
41 speech upon induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame: Michael Jordan’s Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement Speech, YouTube video, posted February 21, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLzBMGXfK4c. The most interesting aspect of Jordan’s speech is not that he is so effusive about his parents; it is that he still feels the need to point out slights from early in his career. Perhaps a lifelong obsession with slights is necessary to become the greatest basketball player of all time.
41 LeBron James was interviewed: “I’m LeBron James from Akron, Ohio,” YouTube video, posted June 20, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XceMbPVAggk.
CHAPTER 2: WAS FREUD RIGHT?
47 a food’s being shaped like a phallus: I coded foods as being shaped as a phallus if they were significantly more long than wide and generally round. I counted cucumbers, corn, carrots, eggplant, squash, and bananas. The data and code can be found at sethsd.com.
48 errors collected by Microsoft researchers: The dataset can be downloaded at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=52418. The researchers asked users of Amazon Mechanical Turk to describe images. They analyzed the keystroke logs and noted any time someone corrected a word. More details can be found in Yukino Baba and Hisami Suzuki, “How Are Spelling Errors Generated and Corrected? A Study of Corrected and Uncorrected Spelling Errors Using Keystroke Logs,” Proceedings of the Fiftieth Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 2012. The data, code, and a further description of this research can be found at sethsd.com.
51 Consider all searches of the form “I want to have sex with my”: The full data—warning: graphic—is as follows:
“I WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH . . .”
MONTHLY GOOGLE SEARCHES WITH THIS EXACT PHRASE
my mom
720
my son
590
my sister
590
my cousin
480
my dad
480
my boyfriend
480
my brother
320
my daughter
260
my friend
170
my girlfriend
140
52 cartoon porn: For example, “porn” is one of the most common words included in Google searches for various extremely popular animated programs, as seen below.
52 babysitters: Based on author’s calculations, these are the most popular female occupations in porn searches by men, broken down by the age of men:
CHAPTER 3: DATA REIMAGINED
56 algorithms in place: Matthew Leising, “HFT Treasury Trading Hurts Market When News Is Released,” Bloomberg Markets, December 16, 2014; Nathaniel Popper, “The Robots Are Coming for Wall Street,” New York Times Magazine, February 28, 2016, MM56; Richard Finger, “High Frequency Trading: Is It a Dark Force Against Ordinary Human Traders and Investors?” Forbes, September 30, 2013, http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardfinger/2013/09/30/high-frequency-trading-is-it-a-dark-force-against-ordinary-human-traders-and-investors/#50875fc751a6.
56 Alan Krueger: I interviewed Alan Krueger by phone on May 8, 2015.
57 important indicators of how fast the flu: The initial paper was Jeremy Ginsberg, Matthew H. Mohebbi, Rajan S. Patel, Lynnette Brammer, Mark S. Smolinski, and Larry Brilliant, “Detecting Influenza Epidemics Using Search Engine Query Data,” Nature 457, no. 7232 (2009). The flaws in the original model were discussed in David Lazer, Ryan Kennedy, Gary King, and Alessandro Vespignani, “The Parable of Google Flu: Traps in Big Data Analysis,” Science 343, no. 6176 (2014). A corrected model is presented in Shihao Yang, Mauricio Santillana, and S. C. Kou, “Accurate Estimation of Influenza Epidemics Using Google Search Data Via ARGO,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 47 (2015).
58 which searches most closely track housing prices: Seth Stephens-Davidowitz and Hal Varian, “A Hands-on Guide to Google Data,” mimeo, 2015. Also see Marcelle Chauvet, Stuart Gabriel, and Chandler Lutz, “Mortgage Default Risk: New Evidence from Internet Search Queries,” Journal of Urban Economics 96 (2016).
60 Bill Clinton: Sergey Brin and Larry Page, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” Seventh International World-Wide Web Conference, April 14–18, 1998, Brisbane, Australia.
61 porn sites: John Battelle, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture (New York: Penguin, 2005).
61 crowdsource the opinions: A good discussion of this can be found in Steven Levy, In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011).
64 “Sell your house”: This quote was also included in Joe Drape, “Ahmed Zayat’s Journey: Bankruptcy and Big Bets,” New York Times, June 5, 2015, A1. However, the article incorrectly attributes the quote to Seder. It was actually made by another member of his team.
65 I first met up with Seder: I interviewed Jeff Seder and Patty Murray in Ocala, Florida, from June 12, 2015, through June 14, 2015.
66 Roughly one-third: The reasons racehorses fail are rough estimates by Jeff Seder, based on his years in the business.
66 hundreds of horses die: Supplemental Tables of Equine Injury Database Statistics for Thoroughbreds, http://jockeyclub.com/pdfs/eid_7_year_tables.pdf.
66 mostly due to broken legs: “Postmortem Examination Program,” California Animal Health and Food Laboratory System, 2013.
67 Still, more than three-fourths do not win a major race: Avalyn Hunter, “A Case for Full Siblings,” Bloodhorse, April 18, 2014, http://www.bloodhorse.com/horse-racing/articles/115014/a-case-for-full-siblings.
67 Earvin Johnson III: Melody Chiu, “E. J. Johnson Loses 50 Lbs. Since Undergoing Gastric Sleeve Surgery,” People, October 1, 2014.
67 LeBron James, whose mom is 5’5”: Eli Saslow, “Lost Stories of LeBron, Part 1,” ESPN.com, October 17, 2013, http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/9825052/how-lebron-james-life-changed-fourth-grade-espn-magazine.
68 The Green Monkey: See Sherry Ross, “16 Million Dollar Baby,” New York Daily News, March 12, 2006, and Jay Privman, “The Green Monkey, Who Sold for $16M, Retired,” ESPN.com, February 12, 2008, http://www.espn.com/sports/horse/news/story?id=3242341. A video of the auction is available at “$16 Million Horse,” YouTube video, posted November 1, 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyggMC85Zsg.
71 weakness of Google’s attempt to predict influenza: Sharad Goel, Jake M. Hofman, Sébastien Lahaie, David M. Pennock, and Duncan J. Watts, “Predicting Consumer Behavior with Web Search,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 41 (2010).
72 Strawberry Pop-Tarts: Constance L. Hays, “What Wal-Mart Knows About Customers’ Habits,” Ne
w York Times, November 14, 2004.
74 “It worked out great”: I interviewed Orley Ashenfelter by phone on October 27, 2016.
80 studied hundreds of heterosexual speed daters: Daniel A. McFarland, Dan Jurafsky, and Craig Rawlings, “Making the Connection: Social Bonding in Courtship Situations,” American Journal of Sociology 118, no. 6 (2013).
82 Leonard Cohen once gave his nephew the following advice for wooing women: Jonathan Greenberg, “What I Learned From My Wise Uncle Leonard Cohen,” Huffington Post, November 11, 2016.
83 the words used in hundreds of thousands of Facebook: H. Andrew Schwartz et al., “Personality, Gender, and Age in the Language of Social Media: The Open-Vocabulary Approach,” PloS One 8, no. 9 (2013). The paper also breaks down the ways people speak based on how they score on personality tests. Here is what they found:
88 text of thousands of books and movie scripts: Andrew J. Reagan, Lewis Mitchell, Dilan Kiley, Christopher M. Danforth, and Peter Sheridan Dodds, “The Emotional Arcs of Stories Are Dominated by Six Basic Shapes,” EPJ Data Science 5, no. 1 (2016).
91 what types of stories get shared: Jonah Berger and Katherine L. Milkman, “What Makes Online Content Viral?” Journal of Marketing Research 49, no. 2 (2012).
95 why do some publications lean left: This research is all fleshed out in Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse M. Shapiro, “What Drives Media Slant? Evidence from U.S. Daily Newspapers,” Econometrica 78, no. 1 (2010). Although they were merely Ph.D. students when this project started, Gentzkow and Shapiro are now star economists. Gentzkow, now a professor at Stanford, won the 2014 John Bates Clark Medal, given to the top economist under the age of forty. Shapiro, now a professor at Brown, is an editor of the prestigious Journal of Political Economy. Their joint paper on media slant is among the most cited papers for each.
96 Rupert Murdoch: Murdoch’s ownership of the conservative New York Post could be explained by the fact that New York is so big, it can support newspapers of multiple viewpoints. However, it seems pretty clear the Post consistently loses money. See, for example, Joe Pompeo, “How Much Does the ‘New York Post’ Actually Lose?” Politico, August 30, 2013, http://www.politico.com/media/story/2013/08/how-much-does-the-new-york-post-actually-lose-001176.
97 Shapiro told me: I interviewed Matt Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro on August 16, 2015, at the Royal Sonesta Boston.
98 scanned yearbooks from American high schools: Kate Rakelly, Sarah Sachs, Brian Yin, and Alexei A. Efros, “A Century of Portraits: A Visual Historical Record of American High School Yearbooks,” paper presented at International Conference on Computer Vision, 2015. The photos are reprinted with permission from the authors.
99 subjects in photos copied subjects in paintings: See, for example, Christina Kotchemidova, “Why We Say ‘Cheese’: Producing the Smile in Snapshot Photography,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 22, no. 1 (2005).
100 measure GDP based on how much light there is in these countries at night: J. Vernon Henderson, Adam Storeygard, and David N. Weil, “Measuring Economic Growth from Outer Space,” American Economic Review 102, no. 2 (2012).
101 estimated GDP was now 90 percent higher: Kathleen Caulderwood, “Nigerian GDP Jumps 89% as Economists Add in Telecoms, Nollywood,” IBTimes, April 7, 2014, http://www.ibtimes.com/nigerian-gdp-jumps-89-economists-add-telecoms-nollywood-1568219.
101 Reisinger said: I interviewed Joe Reisinger by phone on June 10, 2015.
103 $50 million: Leena Rao, “SpaceX and Tesla Backer Just Invested $50 Million in This Startup,” Fortune, September 24, 2015.
CHAPTER 4: DIGITAL TRUTH SERUM
106 important paper in 1950: Hugh J. Parry and Helen M. Crossley, “Validity of Responses to Survey Questions,” Public Opinion Quarterly 14, 1 (1950).
106 survey asked University of Maryland graduates: Frauke Kreuter, Stanley Presser, and Roger Tourangeau, “Social Desirability Bias in CATI, IVR, and Web Surveys,” Public Opinion Quarterly 72(5), 2008.
107 failure of the polls: For an article arguing that lying might be a problem in trying to predict support for Trump, see Thomas B. Edsall, “How Many People Support Trump but Don’t Want to Admit It?” New York Times, May 15, 2016, SR2. But for an argument that this was not a large factor, see Andrew Gelman, “Explanations for That Shocking 2% Shift,” Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science, November 9, 2016, http://andrewgelman.com/2016/11/09/explanations-shocking-2-shift/.
107 says Tourangeau: I interviewed Roger Tourangeau by phone on May 5, 2015.
107 so many people say they are above average: This is discussed in Adam Grant, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (New York: Viking, 2016). The original source is David Dunning, Chip Heath, and Jerry M. Suls, “Flawed Self-Assessment: Implications for Health, Education, and the Workplace,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 5 (2004).
108 mess with surveys: Anya Kamenetz, “ ‘Mischievous Responders’ Confound Research on Teens,” nprED, May 22, 2014, http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2014/05/22/313166161/mischievous-responders-confound-research-on-teens. The original research this article discusses is Joseph P. Robinson-Cimpian, “Inaccurate Estimation of Disparities Due to Mischievous Responders,” Educational Researcher 43, no. 4 (2014).
110 search for “porn” more than they search for “weather”: https://www.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=porn,weather.
110 admit they watch pornography: Amanda Hess, “How Many Women Are Not Admitting to Pew That They Watch Porn?” Slate, October 11, 2013, http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/10/11/pew_online_viewing_study_percentage_of_women_who_watch_online_porn_is_growing.html.
110 “cock,” “fuck,” and “porn”: Nicholas Diakopoulus, “Sex, Violence, and Autocomplete Algorithms,” Slate, August 2, 2013, http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/08/words_banned_from_bing_and_google_s_autocomplete_algorithms.html.
111 3.6 times more likely to tell Google they regret: I estimate, including various phrasings, there are about 1,730 American Google searches every month explicitly saying they regret having children. There are only about 50 expressing a regret not having children. There are about 15.9 million Americans over the age of forty-five who have no children. There are about 152 million Americans who have children. This means, among the eligible population, people with children are about 3.6 times as likely to express a regret on Google than people without children. Obviously, as mentioned in the text but worth emphasizing again, these confessionals to Google are only made by a small, select number of people—presumably those feeling a strong enough regret that they momentarily forget that Google cannot help them here.
113 highest support for gay marriage: These estimates are from Nate Silver, “How Opinion on Same-Sex Marriage Is Changing, and What It Means,” FiveThirtyEight, March 26, 2013, http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/how-opinion-on-same-sex-marriage-is-changing-and-what-it-means/?_r=0.
113 About 2.5 percent of male Facebook users who list a gender of interest say they are interested in men: Author’s analysis of Facebook ads data. I do not include Facebook users who list “men and women.” My analysis suggests a non-trivial percent of users who say they are interested in men and women interpret the question as interest in friendship rather than romantic interest.
115 about 5 percent of male porn searches are for gay-male porn: As discussed, Google Trends does not break down searches by gender. Google AdWords breaks down page views for various categories by gender. However, this data is far less precise. To estimate the searches by gender, I first use the search data to get a statewide estimate of the percent of gay porn searches by state. I then normalize this data by the Google AdWords gender data. Another way to get gender-specific data is using PornHub data. However, PornHub could be a highly selected sample, since many gay people might instead use sites focused only on gay porn. PornHub suggests that gay porn use among men is lower than Google searches would suggest. However, it confirms that there is not a strong relationship bet
ween tolerance toward homosexuality and male gay porn use. All this data and further notes are available on my website, at sethsd.com, in the section “Sex.”
116 4 percent of them are openly gay on Facebook: Author’s calculation of Facebook ads data: On February 8, 2017, roughly 300 male high school students in San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose media market on Facebook said they were interested in men. Roughly, 7,800 said they were interested in women.
119 “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals”: “ ‘We Don’t Have Any Gays in Iran,’ Iranian President Tells Ivy League Audience,” DailyMail.com, September 25, 2007, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-483746/We-dont-gays-Iran-Iranian-president-tells-Ivy-League-audience.html.
119 “We do not have them in our city”: Brett Logiurato, “Sochi Mayor Claims There Are No Gay People in the City,” Sports Illustrated, January 27, 2014.
119 internet behavior reveals significant interest in gay porn in Sochi and Iran: According to Google AdWords, there are tens of thousands of searches every year for “гей порно” (gay porn). The percent of porn searches for gay porn is roughly similar in Sochi as in the United States. Google AdWords does not include data for Iran. PornHub also does not report data for Iran. However, PornMD studied their search data and reported that five of the top ten search terms in Iran were for gay porn. This included “daddy love” and “hotel businessman” and is reported in Joseph Patrick McCormick, “Survey Reveals Searches for Gay Porn Are Top in Countries Banning Homosexuality,” PinkNews, http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/03/13/survey-reveals-searches-for-gay-porn-are-top-in-countries-banning-homosexuality/. According to Google Trends, about 2 percent of porn searches in Iran are for gay porn, which is lower than in the United States but still suggests widespread interest.