Super Crunchers: How Anything Can Be Predicted
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Super Crunchers: How Anything Can Be Predicted for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Groundbreaking ... Not only is it fun to read. It just may change the way you think'
(Stephen D Levitt co-author of Freakonomics )'Entertaining and enlightening'
(Financial Times )'Convincing'
(Economist )Product Description
When would a casino stop a gambler from playing his next hand?
How could a company use statistical analysis to blackball you from the job you want?
Why should you worry when customer services pay attention to your needs?
Beginning with examples of the mathematician who out-predicted wine buffs in determining the best vintages, and the sports scouts who now use statistics rather than intuition to pick winners, Super Crunchers exposes the hidden patterns all around us. No businessperson, academic, student, or consumer (statistically that’s everyone) should make another move without getting to grips with thinking-by-numbers – the new way to be smart, savvy and statistically superior.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
"There are three kinds of lies," said Benjamin Disraeli, "lies, damned lies and statistics." But, like it or not, the world is becoming more quantitative every day and no one can afford to be statistically innumerate. If you live in Excel and use quantitative techniques daily, this may come as no surprise. What may be surprising, even to data-heads, is the extent to which statistical methods are illuminating areas of human life hitherto relegated to "experts." Call it the new age of empiricism or the rise of numerical "super crunchers," but, whatever the name, the trend is real. In this book, Yale law professor and econometrician Ian Ayres provides an unbiased sample of entertaining anecdotes showing how quantitative thinkers are taking over and why the trend is unlikely to abate. The caveat: as the world and its feedback loops get increasingly complex, is regression less useful? If so, Ayers is a bit optimistic. Yet, getAbstract finds that his book, as well as being entertaining and vigorously written, offers a painless review of important statistical ideas that even Disraeli would've found hard to challenge.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Although this book is not for everyone, those with an interest in the commercial application of what can be done (and what is already being done) with vast amounts of data, will find it brilliant. A far cry from the usual academic stuff, this isn't a conspiracy theory book either. It is full of entertaining and genuinely interesting real-life examples; this is a very accessible book. If in doubt, definitely buy.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I came across a reference to this book in a news article about Epagogix, a company that analyses some of the characteristics of film scripts in an attempt to identify whether a film will be successful or not. The author uses Epagogix as an example of the way in which simple statistical models are increasingly being applied to large data sets in order to improve decision making in a range of business and social applications. The interesting point is that the models often outperform the judgement of human experts in tasks such as pricing airline seats, diagnosing and treating disease, finding a life partner and paroling prisoners.
One of the other example tasks he cites is the choice of book titles, and demonstrates it with an account of how he used the statistical technique of randomized testing with Google AdWords to choose between "The End of Intuition" and "Super Crunchers", based on the number of clicks each received. This - perhaps inadvertently - isn't really a good advert for the technique, since the former title actually means something, while the one he ended up using doesn't (what's the difference between a super cruncher and a regular, standard, non-super cruncher anyway?).
However, its use is in keeping with the author's breezy, non-technical style (e.g. "He's the kind of guy that would quickly disabuse you of the notion that number crunchers are meek, retiring souls. I've seen [him] stride around a classroom, gutting the reasoning behind a seminar paper with affable exuberance" [p2]) that tries to spice up what could have been a dull subject in other hands. Thus, he describes the techniques - regression analysis and randomized testing - briskly without any mathematics (there are only a couple of diagrams in the entire book) before moving onto stories about their application. Most of the technical detail and justification has been moved to a notes section that takes up more than a tenth of the book.
I enjoyed reading this account, particularly his exploration of why this sort of thing is becoming more widespread (increasing computer power, cheaper storage, wider accessibility via the internet) and its implications for privacy and control. Those who found Freakonomics stimulating will, I think, like this as well (it should be noted that the present author has worked with one of that book's coauthors - in the past), since it provides some intriguing insights into the way in which trends in the world and our behaviour in it can be unraveled and predicted.
One of the other example tasks he cites is the choice of book titles, and demonstrates it with an account of how he used the statistical technique of randomized testing with Google AdWords to choose between "The End of Intuition" and "Super Crunchers", based on the number of clicks each received. This - perhaps inadvertently - isn't really a good advert for the technique, since the former title actually means something, while the one he ended up using doesn't (what's the difference between a super cruncher and a regular, standard, non-super cruncher anyway?).
However, its use is in keeping with the author's breezy, non-technical style (e.g. "He's the kind of guy that would quickly disabuse you of the notion that number crunchers are meek, retiring souls. I've seen [him] stride around a classroom, gutting the reasoning behind a seminar paper with affable exuberance" [p2]) that tries to spice up what could have been a dull subject in other hands. Thus, he describes the techniques - regression analysis and randomized testing - briskly without any mathematics (there are only a couple of diagrams in the entire book) before moving onto stories about their application. Most of the technical detail and justification has been moved to a notes section that takes up more than a tenth of the book.
I enjoyed reading this account, particularly his exploration of why this sort of thing is becoming more widespread (increasing computer power, cheaper storage, wider accessibility via the internet) and its implications for privacy and control. Those who found Freakonomics stimulating will, I think, like this as well (it should be noted that the present author has worked with one of that book's coauthors - in the past), since it provides some intriguing insights into the way in which trends in the world and our behaviour in it can be unraveled and predicted.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Nice
If you know some basic statistics there is not much new here in terms of new methods. What makes the book interesting is the way the internet and the world in general produces... Read more
Published 17 months ago by A reader
an extended magazine article
It is fun and well written and I certainly learnt something from it.
However it just doesn't go into enough detail. It is just like an extended article in a magazine.
However it just doesn't go into enough detail. It is just like an extended article in a magazine.
Published on 1 Dec 2009 by The Emperor
Disappointing
There are many books around about how econometrics and statistical analysis are used in the modern world, often in areas you may not expect. Read more
Published on 28 Jun 2009 by Mr. G. P. Hunt
Interesting, fun, but a bit glib
"Super Crunchers" is a breezy and somewhat glib account of how quantitative methods are replacing traditional expert judgement. Read more
Published on 29 Dec 2008 by Aleksander Dragnes
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
