mathematics

Super Crunchers

Super Crunchers is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Super Crunchers rather than just read about it. In short: Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to be Smart is a book written by Ian Ayres, a law professor at Yale Law School, about how quantitative analysis of social behaviour and natural experiment can be creatively deployed to reveal insights in all areas of life, often in unexpected ways. With examples such as predicting gestation period more precisely than Naegele's rule, predicting the box office su…

Key takeaways

Super Crunchers belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Super Crunchers to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Super Crunchers from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers Is the New Way to be Smart is a book written by Ian Ayres, a law professor at Yale Law School, about how quantitative analysis of social behaviour and natural experiment can be creatively deployed to reveal insights in all areas of life, often in unexpected ways. With examples such as predicting gestation period more precisely than Naegele's rule, predicting the box office success of films, Orley Ashenfelter's work predicting the price of Bordeaux wine based on weather data, collecting data on the effectiveness of teaching methods such as DISTAR, choosing baseball players based on statistics (Sabermetrics), and A/B testing to determine the most effective advertisements, Ayres explains how statistical evidence can be used as a supplement or substitute for human intuition. The main mathematical approach used in these studies is multiple regression analysis.

Awards The Economist – Books of the Year 2007

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Super Crunchers

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Super Crunchers claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Super Crunchers before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Super Crunchers ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Super Crunchers

In research: Super Crunchers appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Super Crunchers in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Super Crunchers is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2007 non-fiction books, Statistics books, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Super Crunchers outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Super Crunchers in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Super Crunchers means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Super Crunchers out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Super Crunchers in simple terms?

Why does Super Crunchers matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Super Crunchers?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Super Crunchers.