Ian Ayres is considered a law-and-economics guru. In Super Crunchers, he argues that the recent creation of huge data sets allows knowledgeable individuals to make previously impossible predictions. He even concludes that statistical methods are more accurate than the more intuitive conclusions drawn by experts. He joins Leonard to explain how statistical literacy can play an important role in all of our lives.
Super Crunchers is available for purchase at amazon.com
Guests:
Ian Ayres
About The Leonard Lopate Show
Host Leonard Lopate lets you in on the best conversations with writers, actors, ex-presidents, dancers, scientists, comedians, historians, grammarians, curators, filmmakers, and do-it-yourself experts.
Hosted by Leonard Lopate
Sign up for the Book Club e-newsletter.
Features
- 25 Years of Lopate
- Backstory
- Guest Hosts
- Guest Picks
- Please Explain
- The Gurus of How-To
- The Leonard Lopate Show Book Club
- The Lodown
- The Story of New York in 10 Objects
- The Word Maven: Patricia T. O'Conner
- Tributes
- Underappreciated
- Underreported
- Web Extras
Show Archive
Show Archive
Comments [6]
Inetersting but frankly, odd..
Any herbalist worth their salt wouldn't tell you that Echinacea (by itself and at any stage of the cold)) will cure a cold. Didn't need to crunch numbers to discover that. (People mistake a magazine headline for fact quite often!)
And number crunching is how all those other hedge funds/banks are going crazy(read, "losing millions/billions of dollars") with this sub-prime scandal. According to the numbers the imploding of this financial product was 1:1,000,000... or something of that order... Well, welcome to 1 in a million. (It never occured to those finance guys, that small chances do not = "never"!)
Numbers are great (Studied math at university). They can tell us things about things in general, trends, paths. But the power of statstics to be manipulated (see anti-global warming advocates numbers on our climate) is real.
Numbers are tools, not gods. They can't tell us anything meaningful about the anomolies that as human beings are rife in our lives and in our world.
For example, numbers can not predict whether that 2% chance of having serious reactions to a pahrmaceutical drug will be 100% for you. When it's you... 2% safety record means very little. It is 100% for you.
Robotizing is right... thinking it all comes down to 'numbers' is very disturbing. You have to consider the source of anything (who has the most to gain) before you make any decision, esp. with the health care system.
this is such pure BS when it comes to medicine because so much medical information is so far off and created by big pharma - you are roboticizing!
echinacea is too broad a word - there are so many variables to all research - this is such cr-p!
William Gaddis is rolling in his grave.
All those quantitative hedge funds have performed really well in the stock market's recent turmoil, so there's must something to this.*
Ah, the Virgin and the Dynamo continue their unending double-helix dance...
*sarcasm
NYT article on Mr. Ayres data mining thesis claims Netflix customers like Netflix recommendations better than their own. Not me! The quantification of economics has failed, why should we believe data mining will rule? Karen
Leave a Comment
Register for your own account so you can vote on comments, save your favorites, and more. Learn more.
Please stay on topic, be civil, and be brief.
Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. Names are displayed with all comments. We reserve the right to edit any comments posted on this site. Please read the Comment Guidelines before posting. By leaving a comment, you agree to New York Public Radio's Privacy Policy and Terms Of Use.