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I just saw the documentary "The Great Hack" (2019) about Cambridge Analytica. In it, they were talking about “data points” to profile people to better target them and persuade them into voting a certain way. I think they needed around 5000-6000 data points to achieve the claimed outcome.

Could anyone give an example of what a “data point” is in this case?

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  • $\begingroup$ Welcome to Psychology.SE. Can you cite the documentary you are talking about? $\endgroup$
    – Chris Rogers
    Jul 25, 2019 at 17:45
  • $\begingroup$ I presume you are talking about "The Great Hack", and updated your question accordingly. Feel free to roll back in case I am mistaken, or even better, include the actual documentary you saw. $\endgroup$
    – Steven Jeuris ♦
    Dec 23, 2019 at 13:18

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The 'data points' were collected by Cambridge Analytica through an app developed by Dr Aleksandr Kogan. The app was a personality quiz called This is Your Digital Life and was run on Facebook. It collected all kinds of data, including 'likes', birthdays and locations. So it was those kind of data points where Cambridge Analytica was bragging about. It claimed that it had up to 5000 data points on every US voter.

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  • $\begingroup$ Hi, thanks but I need basic examples what a datapoint is. $\endgroup$
    – Antonow297296
    Jul 27, 2019 at 12:57
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    $\begingroup$ A data point is a number. As I say in the answer, a birthday, number of likes etc. $\endgroup$
    – AliceD ♦
    Jul 27, 2019 at 15:38

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