Peter’s Comments (group member since Apr 16, 2013)

Peter’s comments from the New Popular Science Books group.

I guess it depends how much you need to understand what you do. Some models, for instance, don't need to understand just why smiling puts money in their bank account and they would be foolish to look for a serious understanding. But I think business is a bit different. It's dangerous to invest too much in plan just because some model showed some correlation. It might be something temporary that's going to disappear and it sure helps to have a theory to back up the investment.

David Brooks writes about the book today and seems to disagree with the hands-off attitude toward the data. Or maybe I should say "minds-off". He would prefer that we do think about causality and not just trust the numbers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/opi...