I have an interest in 'Big Data', and 'The Doomsday Equation' seemed to be right up my alley. It was, to a certain extent, but the plot was rather silly and it just didn't work for me.

The book is a sort of classic 'do good' vs. 'make a lot of money' battle, with lots of confusion about who is on which side and many shifting allegiances. Alas, the characters weren't very believable, most notably Jeremy, the novel's focus. Although he created and developed the program that was at the heart of the entire story, he didn't understand how certain parts of it worked... I can't see that. If someone is brilliant enough to pull off what he pulled off with the program, there's no way he'd be confused about how any part of it worked.

Otherwise, the story was OK- it moved along quickly. The writing wasn't strong but was good enough to get the points across. The story at a high level was pretty decent, but the details impeded it for me. ( )

Ein Programmierer schreibt ein supermächtiges Programm, das Krieg vorhersagt. Und plötzlich sagt es ihm den dritten Weltkrieg voraus. Startend in drei Tagen. Und dann sind ihm auch noch Killer auf den Fersen...

Es ist spannend, man wird durch den Text getrieben. Es gibt einige Lücken, sowohl vom programmiertechnischen als auch vom erzählerischen her, daher nur drei Sterne. Und auch wegen den Typos an den unpassendsten Stellen. ( )

The Doomsday Equation by Matt Richtel is a highly recommended techno thriller. 4.5 stars

Jeremy Stillwater may be caustic, annoying, and have difficulties connecting with other people, but he is a programming genius who has developed a algorithm that harnesses big data to predict large-scale human conflict. The only problem is that government/military officials and others have told him it doesn't work, leaving him plummeting from unbelievable success to abject failure. But did they tell him the truth. Now "his computer is predicting there is going to be a massive global conflict, engulfing the world in death and destruction—and that the calamity is imminent." The world is going to end in 3 days. April’s projected deaths are 75 million.

Jeremy, who is always connected in some way, is on the move with his tablet. He "needs to get someplace settled and run a test. He needs to check the List. The List is a set of 327 statistical inputs that, Jeremy believes, together describe the state of the world. Oil prices and population density and weather systems and all the rest." Jeremy is unsure is someone got in to his computer program and is trying to run a hoax on him or if his program is compiling the data points correctly.

His program collects data in three major areas. "One is Tantalum. The second is Conflict Rhetoric. The third is the Random Event Meter, known as REM." He notices that "there has been a sharp uptick, 14 percent, in the last few days, of the collective language of conflict, material enough for the computer to care. There’s been an even sharper rise in the Random Event Meter. It’s up 430 percent. Jeremy shakes his head, mostly annoyed, vaguely curious. The meter measures whether there has been some event or series of events that, in historic terms, would seem far outside the standard deviation. And the event can be anything." "He turns to the third variable, tantalum. That’s up 4017 percent. The precious metal is integral to the making of cell phones."

While Jeremy is trying to make sense of the data and run new tests, he notices that he may be being watched. As Jeremy tries to run diagnostic tests and look at the information his program is collecting, he is also on the run, always moving while it seems he is being followed. Despite his caustic nature, he does have people he cares about. Can he save them if this threat is real? And why are people setting lions free from zoos?

Jeremy is an unlikeable protagonist, but you will believe that he is also brilliant and that something is going to happen. Since Jeremy doesn't have the answers, just the predicted outcome of events going on in the world, the tension ratchets up in the count down against the predicted time when the world is supposed to end versus Jeremy's attempts to make sense of the data and avoid whoever is following him. We also don't know if Jeremy is just paranoid or if he really is being followed.

Richtel does an excellent job keeping this high tech thriller up to date. Jeremy relies on all the devices many of us carry and use throughout the day. We are almost always connected and Jeremy reflects that new sensibility. There were plenty of twists in the plot and the ending took me totally by surprise. Well done!

With The Doomsday Equation there should be broad cross-over appeal for those who like science fiction or thrillers.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of HarperCollins for review purposes. ( )

I wanted to read The Doomsday Equation because it was billed as "ingenious as the works of Michael Crichton". I'm going to have to highly disagree with that statement. The storyline had a lot of potential but the protagonist were just an annoying a-hole that was extremely rude to everyone around him. I hated him more than I cared about what happened in the story.

I actually put the book down halfway through and read another book before coming back to this one. Because the storyline had so much potential I thought I would try again and see if it got any better. A little over halfway through the action picked up and I was able to finish the rest of the it within 2 days but the ending was predictable and disappointing. Overall I wouldn't say I disliked the book but thought it was unsatisfying.

I wouldn't recommend this as there are too many well written techo thrillers out there to waste time on this one. Try Daemon by Daniel Suarez or Cyberstorm by Matthew Mather as alternatives. ( )