Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way To Be Smart (Paperback)

by Ian Ayres (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"In the past, one could get by on intuition and experience. Times have changed. Today, the name of the game is data. Ian Ayres shows us how and why in this groundbreaking book Super Crunchers. Not only is it fun to read, it just may change the way you think."—Steven D. Levitt, author of Freakonomics

"Data-mining and statistical analysis have suddenly become cool.... Dissecting marketing, politics, and even sports, stuff this complex and important shouldn't be this much fun to read."—Wired

"[Ayres's] thesis is provocative: Complex statistical models could be used to market products more intelligently, craft better movies, and solve health-care problems—if only we could get past our statistics phobia."—Portfolio

"When statistics conflict with expert opinion, bet on statistics....Businesses, consumers, and governments are waking up to the power of analyzing enormous tracts of information."—Discover

"Super Crunchers shows that data-driven decisionmaking is not just revolutionizing baseball and business; it's changing the way that education policy, health care reimbursements, even tax regulations are crafted.  Super Crunching is truly reinventing government.  Politicians love to tout policy proposals, but they rarely come back and tell you which ones succeeded and which ones failed.  Data-driven policy making forces government to ask the bottom line question of 'What works.'  That's an approach we can all support."—John Podesta, President of the Center for American Progress

"A lively and yet rigorously careful account of the use of quantitative methods for analysis and decision-making.... Both social scientists and businessmen can profit from this book, while enjoying themselves in the process."—Dr. Kenneth Arrow, Nobel Prize winning economist, and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University

“Ayres’ point is that human beings put far too much faith in their intuition and would often be better off listening to the numbers.... The best stories in the book are about Ayres and other economists he knows, whether they are studying wine, the Supreme Court or jobless benefits.... Ayres himself is one of the [statistical] detectives. He has done fascinating research.”—The New York Times Book Review

"Ian Ayres [is] a law-and-economics guru."—Chronicle of Higher Education

“Lively and enjoyable.... Ayres skillfully demonstrates the importance that statistical literacy can play in our lives, especially now that technology permits it to occur on a scale never before imagined.... Edifying and entertaining."—Publishers Weekly

"Super Crunchers presents a convincing and disturbing vision of a future in which everyday decision-making is increasingly automated, and the role of human judgment restricted to providing input to formulae."—The Economist

"Insightful and delightful!" —Forbes



From the Hardcover edition.

Product Description
An international sensation—and still the talk of the relevant blogosphere—this Wall Street Journal and New York Times business bestseller examines the “power” in numbers. Today more than ever, number crunching affects your life in ways you might not even imagine. Intuition and experience are no longer enough to make the grade. In order to succeed—even survive—in our data-based world, you need to become statistically literate.

Cutting-edge organizations are already crunching increasingly larger databases to find the unseen connections among seemingly unconnected things to predict human behavior with staggeringly accurate results. From Internet sites like Google and Amazon that use filters to keep track of your tastes and your purchasing history, to insurance companies and government agencies that every day make decisions affecting your life, the brave new world of the super crunchers is happening right now. No one who wants to stay ahead of the curve should make another keystroke without reading Ian Ayres’s engrossing and enlightening book.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Bantam; Reprint edition (August 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553384732
• ISBN-13: 978-0553384734
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #11,433 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #9 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Databases > Data Mining
  #12 in	Books > Business & Investing > Industries & Professions > MIS
  #19 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Business & Culture > Manager's Guides to Computing

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, brief, nontechnical review of data analysis, February 15, 2009

By	Jason M. Stokes - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Ayres brings data analysis tools like design of experiments to the masses through an easy to read, easy to understand book. While it doesn't go into the details or the math behind statistical tools, the book certainly provides the practical side of why and how these tools can and should be used to make decisions. He heralds a new era of "super crunchers," people who use data to make decisions.

Unfortunately, I think it's perhaps 40 years premature - while some do understand the tools and the need for data, far more are afraid of anything approaching math.

Still, the book is an excellent introduction to analyzing data, and provides a very easy, understandable read of a topic that can often be rather difficult to decipher, especially when reading the "technical" literature.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very interesting and enjoyable book!, February 18, 2009

By	MBA Student (TN) - See all my reviews

This book is really interesting because of how it relates to quantitative tools that can be put to use in amazing ways. I read the book in conjunction with a text book for a MBA level statistics class. I highly recommend it for anyone as a way of seeing the numerous ways that numbers are put to use (most ways I have never even thought of).

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great examples of data mining for fun and profit, March 12, 2009

By	Trevor Burnham (Ann Arbor, MI) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Much of this book is unsurprising, describing the awesome amount of data and processing power available to us. I'm an academic; I'm familiar with statistical analysis. Yet there were anecdotes in here that floored me: Websites playing with different layouts to manipulate their users' behavior; companies using randomized trials to figure out how best to serve (and extract money from) their customers; even the book's title was tested by taking out ads on Google under several different names. "Super Crunchers" wasn't the author's top choice, but it was the apparent of the masses, so that was that.

And we're only at the beginning of this phenomenon. The stories told in Super Crunchers seem fresh now; in a few decades, these powerful methods will be ubiquitous. If you're in business, this book will put you ahead of the curve. And if you're just a customer, this book will help you to be prepared.