Creatalytics by Matthew Burgess

My friend Jody Sherman has encouraged me to blog. The first piece of advice he gave me on topics and writing style was this: “Don’t tell people what books you’re reading. They don’t care.”

Well, he’s probably right, and I will work hard to bring quality original thinking to this blog. But here, in one of my very first posts, I’m going to toss his advice right out the window, and mention Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers is the New Way to Be Smart.

If you are at all interested in how data crunching can give you an edge in business, this is really an important book to pick up and read cover to cover.

This is a book filled with approaches, methods, and examples that I will refer to, directly or indirectly, from time to time. For example, I’m working on a post now. I’d seen a TV ad for eHarmony, and I was convinced that they were doing something wrong and maybe even dishonest with data analyses in their matching methods. Then I read a chapter in Super Crunchers that addressed this issue, I was straightened out.

I’m thinking of titling the post “eHarmony, and Why I Was Wrong About Them Being Complete Idiots.”

The mini case study in the book is a great example of how you can crunch historical data in a regression analysis to estimate how causal factors influence a single variable of interest (conversion rate, ROI, or…compatibility likelihood of a couple).

I’ll write about it in a post to follow. For now, check out Super Crunchers. You’ll be glad you did.

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Books by Matthew Burgess