Introduction
Seth Isaac Stephens-Davidowitz (born September 15, 1982) is an American data scientist, economist, and author. He is a New York Times op-ed contributor and a former data scientist at Google, as well as a former visiting lecturer at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has published research using Google Trends search data, as well as data from Wikipedia and Facebook, to gain real-time insights into people's thoughts and beliefs that they may be unwilling to admit publicly. His book Everybody Lies was published by HarperCollins in 2017. The book subsequently became a New York Times bestseller, and was named a book of the year by both PBS NewsHour and the Economist.
Biography
Stephens-Davidowitz was born on September 15, 1982 in Englewood, New Jersey into a Jewish family, son of Esther Davidowitz and Mitchell Stephens. He grew up in Alpine, New Jersey, and attended Tenafly High School in Tenafly, graduating in 1999. He went on to earn his B.A. in philosophy from Stanford University before enrolling at Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D. in economics in 2013.