Super Crunchers

Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart

By: Ian Ayres

Narrated by: Michael Kramer

2007, American Library Association Notable Books, Winner

2007, The Economist Best Books of the Year, Winner

Why would a casino try to stop a gambler from losing? How can a mathematical formula find your future spouse? Would you know if statistical analysis blackballed you from a job you wanted?

Economist Ian Ayres has spent the better part of his career examining the power in numbers. Decisions used to be made by traditional experts based on experience, intuition, and trial and error. Nowadays, cutting-edge organizations are crunching ever-larger databases to find answers. Today’s super crunchers are providing greater insights into human behavior than ever before - and predicting the future with staggeringly accurate results.

In this lively and groundbreaking audiobook, Ayres takes us behind the scenes into the bold new world of today’s super crunchers.

The author sweeps over a dazzling array of topics with strange-but-true facts, wry wit, and a raconteur’s talent for the fascinating anecdote. Entertaining, enlightening, and absolutely essential, Super Crunchers is an audiobook that no businessperson, consumer, or student - statistically, that’s everyone! - should make another decision without first listening to. Thinking-by-numbers is the new way to be smart.

©2007 Ian Ayres (P)2007 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

"Lively and enjoyable....Ayres skillfully demonstrates the importance that statistical literacy can play in our lives." ( Publishers Weekly)

Good listen.

It's a solid listen. Insightful but not as entertaining as other similar books out there.

Statisticians Rule!

This book shows how all forms of business, medicine, the law, and social activities are being measured, analyzed, and optimized. It is important to recognize that decisions by hunches is a dying practice.

Terrific Book!

All decisions should be based on data!

Great book on

There is an old expression, "the man who knows 'how' will always have a job... reporting to the man that knows 'why'".

This is a fantastic book on the 'what' and 'why' of statistical analysis but if you are looking for a book on 'how' to do a regression analysis, you would want to find a different book.

I teach Six Sigma Black Belt classes and after listening to this book I ordered 25 copies to give to everyone in a class I am teaching. What I really liked about this book is that the author uses a wide variety of examples, from medicine to casinos to car dealers to credit cards to hiring practices, etc. etc. In each example, the author explains how data mining and number crunching has been used to make amazingly accurate predictions that most experts in that particular field did not think possible.

The book is fascinating from beginning to end. It is also a little Orwellian in places as you begin to realize that the surveillance technology show cased in books such as "1984" and movies such as "Minority Report" are much closer to reality than most people realize.

Between audible.com and traditional books, I read/listen to about 30 books a year and I would place this book in my top 5 favorite list over the past couple of years.

Interesting, but too long & monotone

I thought this was an interesting topic, but six hours to listen to this topic is far too long. I think it could’ve been about half that.

The narration was fine, but it felt like a high school science teacher in a monotone lecture. Maybe the material is to blame.

Very Interesting but drawn out

This was an extremely intersting book on how the analysis of information is used to improve decision making, sales campaigns, medical decisions etc. It demonstrates the power of collecting objective information in virtually all endeavors to assess the success of your decisions and how to make the next decision. There is virtually no actual math or technical descriptions about how information is collected or how it is analyzed - most just making the case that you should collect the data and that you should analyze it. In this sense, it is not a 'how to' book but rather 'why you should' book. Although I am great believer in this approach and in fact, do it for a living, after about the 2/3 mark, I found that the book became a bit tedious as there many examples of the same thing and there was little description of how people are actually collecting information.
I realize these types of books are difficult to write because they try and balance information and entertainment with minimal actual technical detail. However, I thought there should have more technical detail in fewer examples. I am guessing that readers attracted to this book have more than a passing intested in the technology and methods.

Required Reading (and Re-Reading!)

Ian Ayres has done us a huge service, he has made statistics completely clear and understandable. More than that, he has made it practical and applicable to everyday life. This book has many excellent examples from the mundane to the noteworthy. You really cannot go a day without seeing something differently and more clearly because of this book.

To misuse a quote from Wordsworth, "My heart leaped up", every time an example showed me that I was in error in my presumed understanding of some concept or or term. Increasing understanding is an emotional experience for me. For example, Ayers pulls apart the 9 month human gestation period into standard deviation of 15 days (skewed to the left of the 9 months everyone comes to expect). So why do doctors still tell us that it will be 9 months? There are historical reasons that explain the misconceptions. "Physicians using the crude Naegle rule cruelly set up first-time mothers for disappointment." Ayers reminds us, as Naegle measured gestation in lunar months in the early 1800's.

Political polls that are reported in "margin of error" terms rather than standard deviations or, even better, probability. We can look at polling data with this little explanation and understand what we are being told (or sold) with some level of confidence. "Current newspaper conventions on how to report polling data are all screwed up", Ayers tells us. He shows us the same data, from the way it is reported, through 2SD (standard deviation) and probability. And he shows us how to figure these out on our own!

Of course conclusions from data are only as good as the reliability of the data itself. Ayers takes us through how scientists have sometimes taken themselves down the garden path to incorrect conclusions. He opens up the data enough to show us where and how these mistakes are sometimes made and overlooked.

Within all of this math, Ayers is able to bring us perspective. Statistics is not a tool to beat people over the head with indisputable "truth" of someone's manufacture. If we understand even a little of the math behind the correlations represented, we are able to draw our conclusions on our own. We are better able to see false or misrepresented correlations. If we are very serious about it, we can dig into the data to find the reliability of the relationships, or at least understand a critical inspection from an opposing point of view.

This is one of the most useful books I've ever read. Ayers invokes the 1950's film, "The Desk Set" to illustrate the context we continue to live in with number crunchers using computers and exercising judgement. Cold hard numbers do not require a cold hard heart, in fact the opposite. We apply our human interest without denying the facts. We must recognize when we are being practical, wishful, heroic, or naive, based on the facts. That should not stop us if our cause is important. We are human, after all.

Aside from a few pronunciations that I did not share, the narration is excellent. The diction and clarity is reliable and only helps in understanding. I bought the kindle book as well, but listened mostly.

I loved this book. A tear came to my eye when it ended.

It's a whole new world

Very clearly written, and nicely narrated book that makes academic subject matter understandable and applicable.

It's disconcerting to be one of the "experts" that will be overwritten by the results of super-crunchers.

From the relationship between wines and weather, to medical decision making, the "super crunchers" are truly affecting our day to day lives.

This book is a clearly written, thought provoking, and an enjoyable listening experience.

Required for MBA but would read anyway

It was a great interesting read and not so technical for the audio version. One of the highlights to this Data Driven Decisions course.

Older Book. But still pretty relevant.

Books like this are heavily context dependent. This book mentions Blockbuster and Netflix DVDs... In 2022 that will make it feel ancient. In some ways it is. But if you think about the subject matter in its context and extrapolate its logic out to present, you can see where we came from, where we are today, and how we got here. The Noise and the Signal was a good bit better on a lot of levels in my opinion. Still, this was worth the read.