Key Messages
Unlock The Transformative Power Of Number Crunching: An Introduction To Big Data Analysis
In Super Crunchers: How and Why Technology Has Changed the Way We Make Decisions, author Dr.
Ian Ayres encourages all of us to discover the power of numbers.
He explains how important it is to embrace number crunching in our digital age, and shows how this practice can help us make better decisions, solve problems effectively, and even become experts in certain fields.
Number crunching doesn’t have to be complicated either – Dr.
Ayres explains how you can use it for anything from winemaking, fraud detection, social work, sports agencies and so much more.
What’s great about this book is that it teaches you how to use data sets to shape policies and think strategically through a step by step process – allowing you to gain insight into previously buried information that could not be seen before.
The ultimate takeaway from this book is that with the advances in technology and data sets being available like never before – anyone can benefit from interpretation of large data sets!
From Vintage Wine To Baseball: Crunching Big Data To Predict The Future
Super crunching has applications in a wide range of fields, from predicting the future quality of vintage wine to evaluating talent in baseball.
Economist and wine enthusiast, Orley Ashenfelter, has used super crunching to create an accurate way to predict the quality of Bordeaux wines by analyzing historical relationships between weather and the price of wine.
His method is so successful that it is used by wine dealers worldwide.
Bill James also showed how super crunching can be applied to baseball when he challenged the assumption that traditional scouting could accurately assess talent without taking into account data-based analysis.
His calculations lead to the Oakland A’s signing potential player Jeremy Brown despite reservations regarding his weight – a decision that proved to be wise when Brown had his major league debut in 2006.
Regression: A Powerful Tool To Find True Love And Detect Fraud
Regression is a super crunching technique that allows you to determine how different factors influence a certain variable of interest and use this information not only to predict future events, but also uncover patterns from the past.
By using regression, it is possible to gain an understanding of how a set of historical data can be used in order to understand different relationships between different variables.
For example, it has been successfully utilized in cases such as wine-tasting and predicting baseballs outcomes.
But beyond that, regression can be utilized for predicting something like compatibility in a potential relationship or even uncover fraudulent activity.
For instance, the dating site eHarmony uses regression to assess which combinations of personality traits have fit best together in the past, based on analyzing the influences these traits have on romantic compatibility.
Similarly, fraudsters were exposed through regression in auctions for public construction projects in New York due to uncovering patterns within the data that wouldn’t normally be visible.
In short, regression is a powerful super crunching technique that ensures maximum accuracy when trying to predict future events and uncover patterns from the past.
Super Crunching: How Randomized Testing Is Revolutionizing Medical And Business Research
Randomized testing is one of the greatest super crunching tools available for use in both medical and business research.
It helps determine whether a medical treatment actually works by controlling for a variety of possible factors like diet, age, and lifestyle habits with randomized trials.
For example, scientists can trust that a roughly equal proportion of smokers will show up in both groups assigned to different treatments – ensuring that their study accurately reflects the efficacy of the treatment being tested.
Businesses can also benefit from randomized testing when it comes to determining effective marketing strategies.
Offermatica’s software allows companies to display two different page designs in real-time and track which design generates more click-throughs and purchases, allowing them to make informed decisions on which approach works best.
By harnessing the power of randomized testing, businesses can increase user engagement while refining their marketing strategies at the same time.
Randomized Testing: How Data And Experiments Are Making Politics More Informed
Randomized testing is revolutionizing how governments and non-profits make decisions.
By using data generated through randomized trials, they can clearly determine which policies will provide the greatest benefit to citizens and society at large.
As an example, there is the Move to Opportunity experiment being conducted in five U.S.
cities that tests whether giving out housing vouchers for poor families to relocate to more affluent neighborhoods improve their lives – in areas of employment, education, health and crime.
Through this experiment we’ll have a much clearer idea of whether or not this kind of intervention actually works.
Moreover, the Poverty Action Lab at MIT has also been running dozens of randomized experiments in developing countries all around the world in order to fight poverty better, testing the impact of different public health measures and micro-lending strategies.
This way, NGOs can avoid wasting resources on projects that don’t work and instead focus on those with proven success rate.
In short, randomized testing is proving an invaluable tool for governments and non-profits alike when it comes to crafting effective policy decisions – providing them with concrete information on what’s likely going to work best and where interventions should be applied on a larger scale.
Super Crunching Outperforms Traditional Expertise In Nearly Every Case: Why Humans Are Affected By Personal Bias
It is indisputable that Super crunching is more accurate than traditional human expertise when it comes to making predictions, and the reason for this is due to personal bias.
Human experts are prone to making mistakes due to their own personal biases, which can be disruptive, while mathematical equations remain unaffected by such influences.
Paul Meehl’s book Clinical Versus Statistical Prediction argued that statistical models outperform clinical ones in almost every case he surveyed in 1954 and 2003.
He researched 144 different predictions, including how well schizophrenics would respond to electroshock therapy and how prisoners would benefit from parole.
In over 128 of those cases, the statistical model was found to be better than the traditional expert judgement.
The difference between machines and humans lies in risk management – people tend to overestimate extreme events such as murder because of how sensationalized it is in the media, but fail to realize that a swimming pool can be 100 times more dangerous for a child than having a gun in the house.
As such, traditional experts still hold value as their roles have shifted – however, it is undeniable that super crunching provides us with the most reliable information available.
Humans And Super Crunching: An Enhanced Path To Accurate Predictions And Analysis
The rise of super crunching has certainly caused a stir among traditional experts whose decisions are based on personal experience and intuition.
After all, it seems to threaten their work.
However, rather than replacing them completely, super crunching simply changes their roles.
Take for example loan officers at banks—they used to be highly respected and held substantial power in deciding who was qualified for a loan.
But with statistical algorithms taking over this job, human input just isn’t necessary anymore.
That said, human experts still have a role to play when combined with super crunching.
Studies have shown that traditional expertise is most effective when paired with statistical algorithms.
Experts can use their opinion to validate the results obtained from data generated through super crunching and develop suitable hypotheses to guide further analysis as well.
In essence, super crunching merely alters the duties of traditional experts – it doesn’t render them useless altogether.
Wrap Up
Super Crunching is now a powerful way to understand and reshape our world.
Through gathering and crunching large data sets, real-world decisions can be made with an increased level of accuracy than ever before thanks to statistics able to predict the future and uncover the past.
It’s important for businesses to collect their own data, by running randomized tests, in order to benefit from this new system of ‘super crunching’.
By doing so, information can be gained which will help them develop strategies and make decisions that are better for everyone.
