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

Super Crunchers had a promising beginning to its premise. Namely, that statistics and regressions, when applied properly, will beat so-called "experts" almost every time. The notion of proof over intuition appeals to me greatly. The book is a good primer, but it never really gets past certain hand-selected anecdotes. This book is written for the masses rather than statistics majors. So, it...more

Super Crunchers had a promising beginning to its premise. Namely, that statistics and regressions, when applied properly, will beat so-called "experts" almost every time. The notion of proof over intuition appeals to me greatly. The book is a good primer, but it never really gets past certain hand-selected anecdotes. This book is written for the masses rather than statistics majors. So, it will be watered down for that audience. The main theme may be expressed by saying "Look at the data, not anecdotal evidence." How does one express that theme properly by relying almost solely upon anecdotes?   hide

The experts are dead long live statistics! Well not entirely dead...together the experts and statistics will make the best predictions. Ayres shows us that a world of numbers has both scary and fantastic implications and most importantly that "thinking by the numbers is the new way to be smart"

Reading (listening) for school not as bad as thought it would be :) actually it is quite informative

I had high expectations from this book which weren't quite met. The geek in me had hoped for more details about the methods and technology used for crunching large volumes of statistics. The info junkie in me had hoped for more Freakonomics-like surprises about how statistics are overturning some widely-held beliefs. There was some of both, but also a lot of passages which give...more

I had high expectations from this book which weren't quite met. The geek in me had hoped for more details about the methods and technology used for crunching large volumes of statistics. The info junkie in me had hoped for more Freakonomics-like surprises about how statistics are overturning some widely-held beliefs. There was some of both, but also a lot of passages which give detailed of examples of ways that statistical analysis is being deployed. Some of these will be interesting to most readers because of their wide impact -- targeted pricing of goods, or profiling of credit risks -- but others dealt with more arcane issues in medicine and politics that I found dull. Also, the last chapter delves into the importance of standard deviations, a topic which I found confusing (and I like math).   hide

An okay read. Covers statistical analysis broadly but never in any depth. Interesting anecdotes, and some good ideas in the afterword. Anybody with a background in quantitative analysis may find this book somewhat introductory. However, it is well written.

a good example of emprical story telling :] ...yes everyone wants to be a tecno-crat [ atleast once ;] ]

This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how firms come to decisions by aggregating data.

Ayres might have called this "The Death of Intuition". In fact, though his expository style is breezy and even charming, he tends to overlook that there's a sense of *what* to crunch (in this case, "crunching" is sort of a meta-term for "large scale data mining") that isn't available via crunching - ultimately, somebody has to make some...more

Ayres might have called this "The Death of Intuition". In fact, though his expository style is breezy and even charming, he tends to overlook that there's a sense of *what* to crunch (in this case, "crunching" is sort of a meta-term for "large scale data mining") that isn't available via crunching - ultimately, somebody has to make some intelligent inferences based on the descriptive data delivered by the crunchers. Still - a great read, and a clear-cut path to the truth of many markets today, including housing, financial services, and healthcare.   hide