The devil's data dictionary

by Jim Sterne

In this modern homage to Ambrose Bierce, Sterne tucks his tongue firmly in cheek and lets loose on an industry only Dilbert could love. With a mix of wry humor and outlandish sarcasm Sterne hits the datarati upside the head with a well-worn humerus bone and puts the pun in pundit. Lavishly illustrated by award-winning illustrator, Yevgenia Nayberg. Available October 1, 2015 Entries in this devilish dictionary Algorithm Regularly recurring remarks from the former U.S. V.P. who invented the Internet. Artificial Intelligence Fourth cocktail. Big Data Giga, tera, peta, exa, zetta, yotta, yadda, yadda. Correlation Coincidence confidently mistaken for cause. Covariant A dependent couple with the same deviation. ... and that's just through the C's. Perfect for the data-obsessed - and that might just be YOU. 98.7% funny - Ashley Friedlein, Econsultancy Funny and in some cases probably true. Jeff Jonas, IBM Fellow Jim has made data accessible to the masses since the dawn of the digital age. And now, he's making it funny. And, awesome. Avinash Kaushik, Google. Author, Web Analytics 2.0 All the fun you need is here, from A to W. Is that the definition of "missing data? Thomas H. Davenport, Distinguished Professor, Babson College, Author, Competing on Analytics and Big Data @ Work A masterpiece . . . I laughed, I cried, I - apparently - completely misunderstood everything about data and analytics. Ben Gaines, Adobe

102 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Jim Sterne]

Funniest book I ever wrote.

Besides the wonderful illustrations, it contains gems like:

Algorithm
Regularly recurring remarks from the former U.S. V.P. who invented the Internet.

Artificial Intelligence
Fourth cocktail.

Big Data
Giga, tera, peta, exa, zetta, yotta, yadda, yadda.

Correlation
Coincidence confidently mistaken for cause.

Covariant
A dependent couple with the same deviation.

[Robert Petkovic]

It takes a lot of knowledge on a subject to be able to tell jokes about it and Jim Sterne know a lot about data. The book is funny but makes you think how serious we sometimes are while thinking data is that important, not knowing how wrong can we be sometimes :)