Book Club -- Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie or Die

A fascinating, sort of scary, book about the power of big data and new analytics to predict human behavior, Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie or Die is the latest addition to the CT Health Policy Project Book Club. In 2012 there was a lot of news about the revelation that Target was using predictive analytics to identify and market to pregnant women and their families, sometimes before they’ve told anyone they are expecting. Since then analytics have gone much further – but it is usually a good thing. Hundreds of examples in the book include predictions of flu trends from Google searches, that retirement reduces life expectancy, and smokers suffer less from repetitive motion disorder. The author goes beyond giving examples to explain in clear language how it’s done and how companies and the government are acting on those predictions.