Guest Post: Big Data, or B.S.?

By David Murray

We got wind of it last week, through a splashy article on Stanford Business School’s website titled excitingly, “A Big Data Approach to Public Speaking.”

An Austin, Texas-based consultancy called Quantified Communications “analyzed more than 100,000 presentations from corporate executives, politicians and keynote speakers,” according to the Stanford piece. “They examined behaviors ranging from word choices and vocal cues to facial expressions and gesture frequency. They then used this data to rate and rank important communication variables such as persuasiveness, confidence, warmth, and clarity.”

Let’s set aside the fact that the above paragraph reads like a suicide note.

The insights the “big data” yielded are at once completely commonplace—strong and clear language matters, vocal qualities matter, gestures matter, authenticity is good—and comically specific.

For instance, the company claims that “the language used in corporate earnings calls affects up to 2.5% of stock price improvement,” according to the Stanford piece. “Up to” 2.5%? How on earth could they come up with that?

We also learn that “a 10% increase in vocal variety can have a highly significant impact on your audience's attention to and retention of your message.” How do you measure a 10% increase in variety, and how do you NOT measure the size of the impact beyond saying, “highly significant.”

And finally—get your mind ready for this one—we learn that “the top 10% of authentic speakers were considered to be 1.3 times more trustworthy and 1.3 times more persuasive than the average communicator.” The Stanford piece adds, “Authenticity is made up of the passion and warmth that people have when presenting.”

The folks at Quantified Communications have some explaining to do, to natively skeptical speechwriters everywhere: About how they actually “analyzed” 100,000 presentations, how they came to the figures they came to, and most importantly, to what imaginable use might this big data be put by working leadership communicators who already know that compelling communication is the combined result of what the speaker says and how the speaker says it.

They have explaining to do, and they should have a platform to do it.

So Vital Speeches of the Day is sending this article to Quantified Communications’ executive communications practice lead Briar Goldberg, and they’ll publish her response.

David Murray is executive director of the Professional Speechwriters Association. He's also editor of Vital Speeches of the Day magazine.

This piece was originally posted on Vital Speeches of the Day.

Around the Word: Book Discovery

Book Discovery. How do readers decide what book to read next? This process, known as "book discovery," is the latest buzz phrase in the online book marketing world. Every day there seems to be a new article or blog post debating the merits of various websites hoping to woo visitors with their book recommendations or browsing tools. This trend is growing so quickly that Publishing Perspectives is already asking if the book discoverability bubble is ready to pop. Trying to make sense of it all? A recent article on Forbes clearly lays out the online book market, customer habits, and book discovery options.

Decisions, Decisions. With so many websites trying to find the sweet spot of book discovery, there are lots of options to explore. Most people are familiar with Amazon's recommendations. But if you're looking for a more tailored experience, many book discovery websites are trying to more carefully cater to customer preferences. Bookish, launched earlier this year, is "an exercise in big data" as CEO Ardy Khazaei explains. The site will use everything from genres and authors to editorial themes and reviews to make its recommendations. Then there's Goodreads, probably the most well known and established book discovery tool, which crowdsources peer recommendations and reviews to make its selections.  Looking for something a little more exclusive? Riffle is a new invite-only book discovery site that's been compared to Pinterest. It's powered through a Facebook app that allows users to share books with friends, create lists, and see industry experts' curated pages. Still hungry for more book discovery options? Check out The Nudge List, Amazon's Shelfari, or Rabble, a Rotten Tomatoes–like website with expert reviews that is set to launch in April.

Word of Mouth. Even with all these options, the real-world experience of getting book recommendations from friends still reigns supreme. A recent Goodreads survey found that "trusted friend" remains the top reason respondents decided to read a book, followed by "everyone talking about it" and "book club." Another study, conducted by Codex Group, underscores just how far online book discovery has to go: only 7 percent of frequent online book buyers said they actually "discovered" the last book they purchased on the internet. Why can't book discovery websites seem to break through? The New Republic's Hillary Kelly has a thoughtful take: "Data has no imagination. When it comes to book recommendations, attempts to sort or streamline or mathematize them necessarily dehumanizes the process. The very nature of the endeavor, much like digesting Ulysses, requires an infinitely more complex machine: the human brain."