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by: Ian Ayres  List Price: $25.00 Amazon.com's Price: $16.50 You Save: $8.50 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 519.5 EAN: 9780553805406 Edition: 1 ISBN: 0553805401 Label: Bantam Manufacturer: Bantam Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 272 Publication Date: August 28, 2007 Publisher: Bantam Release Date: August 28, 2007 Studio: Bantam Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: Why would a casino try and stop you from losing? How can a mathematical formula find your future spouse? Would you know if a statistical analysis blackballed you from a job you wanted? Today, number crunching affects your life in ways you might never imagine. In this lively and groundbreaking new book, economist Ian Ayres shows how today's best and brightest organizations are analyzing massive databases at lightening speed to provide greater insights into human behavior. They are the Super Crunchers. From internet sites like Google and Amazon that know your tastes better than you do, to a physician's diagnosis and your child's education, to boardrooms and government agencies, this new breed of decision makers are calling the shots. And they are delivering staggeringly accurate results. How can a football coach evaluate a player without ever seeing him play? Want to know whether the price of an airline ticket will go up or down before you buy? How can a formula outpredict wine experts in determining the best vintages? Super crunchers have the answers. In this brave new world of equation versus expertise, Ayres shows us the benefits and risks, who loses and who wins, and how super crunching can be used to help, not manipulate us. Gone are the days of solely relying on intuition to make decisions. No businessperson, consumer, or student who wants to stay ahead of the curve should make another keystroke without reading Super Crunchers. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Intuition vs. Data...and the winner is...Neither. I think. Super Crunchers is a fascinating study of the ascension of data analysis and statistics in decision and policy-making in all realms of life, from business to government to health. Ayres shows us how the ability to collect millions upon millions of data points and number crunch them to study trends, analyze relationships and make predictions, has created a schism between professionals (lawyers, educators and doctors) for example, who use their experience and expertise with intution ... Read More Rating: - The end of the expert?The gimmick in the TV show Numbers--and all crime shows have to have some sort of gimmick--is that a genius mathematician is able to help the FBI solve crimes. He particularly does so by finding patterns amongst the haze of large data sets. Ian Ayres's book Super Crunchers is a non-fiction look at a similar idea: the trend to find patterns and make predictions from analysis of large amounts of data. The two principal ways that this is done--outlined in the first two chapters--is through ... Read More Rating: - The End of IntuitionThe author explains that he originally intended to title the book, "The End of Intuition". I think that would have been the better title. Interestingly, the name change resulted in a clever use of Google's adwords. The problem with the title Super Crunchers is that it makes the impression that the book is about data mining huge data sets. I have read one scathing review in the KDD community that makes this point, but data mining is not the focus of the book. If you are looking for a book about data mining, ... Read More Rating:  - Entertaining, but far from superThis is an easy and mostly entertaining read. The author uses many anecdotes to persuade us that statistics can be a useful tool for decision making. Some of the described applications use lots of data and multiple regression. Those are easier to do now than they used to be, because more data is collected and kept. Some are trivial. If your company hurts a customer, apologize. You might get some ideas of thing to do that might help your organization. You will not get ... Read More Rating: - What you can do with large datasetsThe answer is of course: a lot. And Ian Ayres' book will tell you a little about it. Supercrunchers are those who use lage datasets to find patterns in human behaviour, and predict the future based on these large datasets. The book informs us that super crunching is on the verge of being used all over. E.g. Chess grandmaster Kasparov was no match for IBMs Deep Blue chess computer, that stored some 700.000 grandmaster chess games to help find ... Read More 
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