In an effort to hype myself up, I developed the theory, however flimsy, that analytics was a natural extension of my liberal arts education. The e-book startup had used the analytics software to track our alpha users through the app, and I had enjoyed looking at some of the data: what our investors were reading, and abandoning; whether or not people read public-domain books with cover art designed by the CPO, which we had added to bolster the library. In a certain light, I tried to convince myself, business analytics could be seen as a form of applied sociology.