Super Freakonomics is an amazing book. This book is driven by scientific facts and goes a long way to show as to why studying patterns in data is the most full proof way of coming to conclusions especially when situations go beyond control and need to be quarantined.
The examples of seemingly trivial solutions being able to cure grave vagaries like puerperal fever, seat belts being able to reduce deaths due to car accidents goes to show that there are times when we can think out of the box and extend solutions from other fields into new unexplored areas. Since our limbic brain understands only signals, at times we fail to comprehend how effective trivial solutions can be to cure seemingly behemoth problems.
The role of media has been highlighted as well , Kitty Genovese incident, wherein to sell the news facts are twisted and this goes on to have deep impact on humanity down the line. News presented for many decades which sells as hot news, we really need to delve deep and find the true authenticity of the same since facts can be twisted to make the news sell
Data analysis and data science has always played a major role and numbers/patterns have never lied. What we are seeing in the modern era, the demand for data scientists was always the case over the years now the effect seems more profound due to the high presence of social media.
Look at data analysis done by Semmelweis for puerperal fever root cause eradication, Robert McNamara for seat belts in cars, Horsley’s data pattern analysis to track down terrorists, proof that good doctors may not have the best reviews, proof that heart ailments can be prevented by taking low cost medicines, the basis for all is data science being able to carve out a pattern from it.The baseball team selection example , with kids who have a full 10 to 11 months more maturity resonates with the message of Gladwell in Outliers on the Canadian ice hockey team selection. This too has been carved out by studying data pattern over the years.
The best one is towards the end of the book wherein Al Gore’s honest efforts towards reducing global warming by changing human behavior has been compared with injecting Sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere to reduce global warming. Such kind of insights are really illuminating and the very fact that organizations like IV are thinking along these lines gives a lot of hope and belief that the world is in charge of innovative individuals who can think their heart out to save humanity from dreaded problems like global warming.
Pile on motivation!!!!