First off, I feel the need to warn my buddy Paul, that this has nothing to do with the X-box video game series (Paul has informed me that I need to write about stuff he cares about, read video games, in order for me to get any readership). I will however be posting on game theory soon, and maybe there is something he can get out of that, though I’m not sure how applicable it is to World of Warcraft.

On to the good stuff… Phil Rosenzweig has presented an excellent book that is full of great insights as well as clear writing. It should be required reading before reading any “Secret to Success” book. For those of you unfamiliar with the “halo effect”, Wikipedia defines it as a cognitive bias whereby the perception of a particular trait is influenced by the perception of the former traits in a sequence of interpretations.

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I think my favorite part of this book was the reference to the W. Edwards Deming quote “In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data”. Davenport and Harris take a survey approach to what companies are doing with statistical analysis of data in order to base their decision making. What I do wonder, and I think its the Taleb influence, is how much of the statistical analysis that the authors site are misappropriating Gaussian distributions to non-Gaussian phenomena, and thereby increasing profitability in the short to medium term, but exposing the companies to great losses in the long term.

That aside, I do agree with the concept of looking at data to help guide what the best course of action would be. One of the topics they bring up (though not nearly as entertainingly as Moneyball by Michael Lewis) is the current usage of statistics in determining the value of players in sports. This certainly appeals to me, as a proponent of a meritocracy.

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