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I highly recommend this book for all of the data-driven and logical minds that read my blog (and I know there are many). Super Crunchers is a great book detailing the use of data-driven analysis in unconventional fields - evidence-based medicine, for example. The chapter on how statisticians determined that point shaving (a form of bribery) was occurring in college basketball is particularly interesting.

However, I think my favorite theme of the book was the fact that supposedly intelligent individuals - such as medical doctors - couldn't do entry-level high-school mathematics or probability. When asked what the chances that the author's unborn child would have Down's Syndrome, one doctor gave multiple probabilities based on multiple tests. The author asked him to give a final answer, to which the doctor said 'You can't combine probabilities like that.' (Bayes' Theorum, anyone?) In another case, a doctor gave multiple answers to the same question and then said 'I could give you a number, but in reality she either has it or she doesn't.'

Here's the amazon breakdown of the book:

Yale Law School professor and econometrician Ayres argues in this lively and enjoyable book that the recent creation of huge data sets allows knowledgeable individuals to make previously impossible predictions. He calls the data set analysts super crunchers and discusses the changes they're making to industries like medical diagnostics, air travel pricing, screenwriting and online dating services. Although Ayres presents both sides of this revolution, explaining how the corporate world tries to manipulate consumer behavior and telling consumers how to fight back, his real mission is to educate readers about the basics of statistics and hypothesis testing, spending most of his time in an edifying and entertaining discussion of the use of regression and randomization trials. He frequently asks whether statistical methods are more accurate than the more intuitive conclusions drawn by experts, and consistently concludes that they are. Ayres skillfully demonstrates the importance that statistical literacy can play in our lives, especially now that technology permits it to occur on a scale never before imagined.