I have enjoyed Kaiser Fung‘s blog JunkCharts for some time. He provides insight regarding data visualizations. His book Numbers Rule Your World: The Hidden Influence of Probabilities and Statistics on Everything You Do reveals how statistics and data mining find insights too good to pass up. Numbers make good stories even more compelling.
Kaiser Fung takes an excellent approach to confirming that data analysis is now key to improving outcomes and discovering insights.Fung outlines the use of big data analysis to solve five problems:
1. Fast Passes/Slow Merges: managing traffic patterns by the Minnesota DOT. This chapter reveals how frustrating statisticians can become when confronting politicians who ignore data.
2. Bagged Spinach/Bad Score tracked a deadly E. coli outbreak that caused three deaths across 23 states.
3. Item Bank/Risk Pool is a fascinating chapter about Florida insurance policies. Hurricane seasons come and go and yet an established city mayor and established businessman could not maintain an ongoing insurance business even with years of experience in state government. I found this chapter interesting to discover how the state games the insurance system say for say….Hurricane Wilma. For Higher Education this chapter also reveals Admissions related stories that are most interesting when compared to hospital billing. Fung also brings into focus the Golden Rule lawsuit that successfully charged discrimination against minority applicants in the insurance industry.
4. Timid Testers/Magic Lassos is a great chapter on the dark history of baseball, BALCO and HGH steroids. From baseball to Tyler Hamilton‘s Tour de France biking performance. Marion Jones, Roger Clemons and every accused pro athlete (mostly in baseball) who wanted to take a lie detector test did not realize that physicists at Johns Hopkins University successfully built a new lie detector that removes the human element from counterintelligence screening. Fung points out the when confronted with the new test just about every attorney advised their pro athletes clients to withdraw offers to take a lie detector. Seems like a lot of delayed confessions began about that timeframe.
5. Jet Crashes/Jackpots has a chapter title that is bound to capture your attention. With a statisticians’s view of the world of flight and winning a lottery jackpot proves to be a very interesting read since it reveals how lottery stores can game the system. Very interesting read indeed.
So…..how can you beat a statistician? Fung shares the following:
1. The discontent of being averaged: Always ask about variability.
2. The virtue of being wrong: Pick useful over true.
3. The dilemma of being together: Compare like with like.
4. The sway of being asymmetric: Heed the give-and-take of two errors.
5. The power of being impossible: Don’t believe what is too rare to be true.
Its a probably worth the read if your trying to game a system.