Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Crunching the Numbers

Over at Balkinization, Ian Ayres has posted about his new book, Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers Is the New Way to Think Smart. (You've got to like any book that was named by a randomized experiment. I'm definitely going that way for my next article.) If you follow the link to the YouTube interview with Ayres, you'll see that the book is about how statistical analysis is (or should be) replacing intuition as a means of corporate decision-making.

I thought MoneyLaw readers would be particularly interested in this development and in this book. What role do statistics play in decision-making at your law school? Are your colleagues (or other relevant decision-makers) receptive to empirical studies that don't comport with their intuitions?

More on this to come.

3 Comments:

Blogger Jeffrey Harrison said...

Sam, don't be so cynical. Many law professors do not need numbers because they already know the truth. Why waste the time!!

8/29/2007 10:31 AM  
Blogger sam kamin said...

Jeff --

It's not just the faculty, who are inclined by their very nature to think that they know all of the answers. It's the other stake-holders in a law school -- the students, the central administration, the alumni -- who can sometimes seem disinterested in learning the facts.

8/29/2007 11:53 AM  
Blogger Jeffrey Harrison said...

Yes, the facts can be really inconvenient.

8/29/2007 12:14 PM  

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