Book: Fooled by Randomness

When I commented on the book Freakonomics back in May – I had a bunch of entertaining comments about this being a book that had been out for years. With that I mind, I decided to continue my noticeably antique view of the world with a comment on an absolutely FANTASTIC book I read recently: Fooled by Randomness (2001) by Nassim Taleb.

For those of you (who for some reason, like me, did not get to read this book when published) – Nassim Taleb is a mathematics and statistics adept trader, but perhaps more a philosopher who has out of the ordinary comments about probability, psychology and life.

This book should not be recommended reading for a web analyst or online marketer – but mandatory! I simply cannot recommend this enough and I will bring into play a handful of his thoughts over the next coming period. Such as:

• Monte Carlo simulations
• Data snooping
• Causality
• Path dependent outcome

.. and if the above subjects does not turn you on. It’s time to buy a Porsche.

The final question (for myself) - Am I fooled by randomness along with everybody else? hmmm :-)
Whatever the answer is -- GO READ THE BOOK!! -- I will question you in random aspects if I meet you in Washington (Emetrics) next week.

Cheers

Book: Freakonomics

On my way back... from San Francisco to Europe – I had the pleasure (I had 17 hours of travel to kill) to read Freakonomics the book. I know I am way late in commenting this book, but for some reason it did just not end up on my commute-reading-list.

Since most of you reading my blog most likely read this book already – I will spare you the pompous review and simply conclude that:

"Any serious analyst who are eager to move beyond reporting and basic cross-analysis of a few metrics and into matters beyond the low hanging fruits MUST read Freakonomics the book."

You will get two things from this book that are essential:

1. The desire to ask even more interesting questions with your data
2. The desire to use Regression analysis even more

Let us start to investigate.... :-)