Book Review: Super Crunchers
We know a computer can beat a chess grandmaster.
Can a computer more accurately predict how the Supreme Court will rule on cases than a group of Law School Deans, former Supreme Court Clerks, and Federal Judges?
What about predicting better than a movie studio exec which movies will make money and which won't?
Turns out, they can. And in his new book, Super Crunchers
, Ian Ayres, (who also co-authored Why Not?: How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big And Small ) sets out to explain how this is possible.
And why it is happening.
For hard-core data junkies who believe in the power of statistics, you'll revel in some great anecdotes (like predicting wine values for a given year based on rainfall and summer temperatures before the wines are even made) to help bolster your cases.
For those new to the power of data, it'll open your eyes to what is going on all around you (and about you!)
I'm going to dust off those old Stats class notes and work on my regression modeling (and keep digging down into the data).
An excellent book.
