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

Ian Ayres

Aug 2007 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Michael Kramer

About this audiobook

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.

About the author

Ian Ayres is an economist and lawyer who is the William K. Townsend Professor at Yale Law School and a professor at Yale’s School of Management. He is a columnist for Forbes magazine and a regular contributor to the New York Times Freakanomics blog. He served for seven years as the editor of the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, and in 2006 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has written ten books, including Super Crunchers, which was a New York Times business bestseller and named one the Best Economics and Business Books of the Year by The Economist. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Michael Kramer is an actor, director, and narrator. He has recorded more than 100 audiobooks, as well as titles for the Library of Congress Talking Books program. Among the recognition he has garnered for his narration are AudioFile magazine’s Earphones Award and the Torgi Award. Mr. Kramer lives in Washington, DC, where he is active in the area’s theater scene, and has appeared in productions at the Shakespeare Theatre, the Kennedy Center, and Theater J.