Super Crunchers

Steven Hole

Dr. Tokle

MGT 217

22 February 2012

Super Crunchers

Super Crunchers is a book that shows how numbers, technology, and statistical tests are related to the way you and I live our everyday lives. The book had multiple examples of how this works, and it really made me think about how we can all be pursued into doing something. The first few chapters of this book were revolved around the regression equation. Regression produces an equation that best fits whatever data that someone is looking at, and can be used to predict what will happen in the future.

Chapter one started with how statistics is tied to helping people with recommendations. Recommendations could be made through using “collaborative filtering”; this can be seen on programs like Google where the more times somebody searches something it will appear at the top, because it is something that is probably more of what you are searching for. This would be huge for consumers and retailers in making final decisions. Collaborative filtering is like polling or taking votes, and the output is filed so the best or what is recommended is what shows first. The author used multiple examples of firms who use “collaborative filtering”; such as Pandora radio, MSNBC, and Netflix. Pandora uses an “I like” and “Don’t play again” buttons, so that the music that is playing will be more tailored to your liking. MSNBC uses something similar to Google, where it brings up the most searched items, because it is most likely what a person is searching for. Netflix used a star rating system, where people rate movies they watch one to five stars.

Another topic that came up in chapter one was James Surowieki’s idea of “The wisdom of crowds.” What this means is people tend to make better predictions when in a group rather than by themselves. For example the show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire”, the audience is right 90% of the time, when the phone a friend is right less than one third of the time. Many dating...