Book Review: Super Crunchers – Ian Ayres

The book Super Crunchers, by Ian Ayres, is a book covering numbers and statistics and how they can be applied to real-world situations to benefit people and the companies in the world. It heavily focuses on the stories behind these numbers, making it easier to understand for people even outside the maths and stats field.

A super cruncher is basically using a specific set of data and applying it by using regression models and trial simulations. These two things create a highly accurate statistic that can create the best statistical choice to make for a specific company or human. The author uses many specific examples of businesses using these super crunchers to make optimized decisions, which in turn, helped their businesses grow. We are also presented with stories where super crunchers are also used to track and identify different consumers.

In the later chapters of the book, we are taken in a wild adventure in the reasons why super crunchers are popular now and the winners and losers of super crunchers. Finally, we discuss the future of super crunching. These chapters are less about the stories of super crunching and much on its effects on people and the come-up of it.

Overall, I thought the book was a quality read. Currently, I am taking statistics for my math class, so this was a good read to think about while learning about the principles of some of the things I am reading about in this book. I definitely have changed a lot since from the beginning of this book, as now I realize that statistics is a lot more interesting than I ever thought it was. Some of the credit goes to learning the content in class, but some also goes to this book. I hope to learn more about statistics in the coming years.

Businesses on Public Opinion, Rough Draft

Back in the 1800’s, the food business may seem like better than today, as we see a world without GMO’s and artificial flavoring. But this was not the case in the day. The food being served to Americans back in the 1800’s and even early 1900’s was poor, as businesses were finding ways to make their products more appealing and less expensive. It took a huge effort from Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemist in the uncharted world of chemistry, to change. But looking through the different lenses of American businessmen and even congressmen, it is understandable to the reason why it took so long to regulate these harmful components because of America’s support for businesses. But looking at this story, it is clear that businesses should be responsible to listening to public opinions and align with their beliefs, or else risk losing more money.

First, we have to look at the consumer’s point of view to understand the business behind it. Usually a traumatic event or a growing crisis will lead to a growing concern to a consumer about what businesses should sell or allow. For example, take Walmart taking guns off their market due to the growing concern of mass shootings in America or Starbucks planning to get rid of plastic straws by 2020. To quote the New York Times, “Walmart said it made the announcement after weeks of discussion and research about how best to respond. The decision is in line with public opinion polls that favor more gun controls, and advocates…” and again, in the Times Starbucks article, “The plastic straw… has been falling out of favor in recent years, faced with a growing backlash over its effect on the environment.” What do both of these events have in common. Both events had a global/national crisis going on, and now that the public opinion is shining light on these issues, businesses jump on the bandwagon to try and keep these people on their good side.

Next, we must take in consideration the businesses of today. These days, businesses are obsessed with trying to get a better public opinion. Take for example why companies are sponsoring LGBTQ communities or donating to charities. According to Inc, “Recent studies suggest that millennials have driven the social responsibility movement, with 70 percent of them reporting that they’ll spend more with brands that support causes.” Dawn Ennis, an LGBT-rights supporter, asked a question in her article about businesses supporting LGBT, says “Are consumers so gullible as to actually choose to spend their money on a brand with a rainbow? Well, yes. According to the first article, people, especially millennials, would be more likely to be spending money on these businesses, despite maybe these companies having ulterior motives for supporting the LGBT community. Even if businesses don’t support the cause, just being out there in the bandwagon increases public image. So supporting causes that the public also supports not only improves the look of the company from the outside, but the money coming inside.

Finally, should business cater to the public’s wants? Well, they should, or else run the risk of losing money. If they didn’t, then the pure food crisis in the early 1900’s would have lasted longer, as businesses would see no real reason to give in, as their precious money was still being earned. It was only when their image was being attacked when they responded. For example, take when Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, a book exposing the horrors of the meat industry through a fictional story. To quote The Poison Squad, a book about Harvey Wiley’s biography about his struggle for pure food, “[Sinclair] had learned that the meatpacking interests had quietly donated $200,000 toward Roosevelt’s election campaign in 1904.” These food businesses felt attacked, and took measures in their own hands, and gave Roosevelt $200,000. In 2019, this would be worth more than $5.7 million. This is not regular for a business to donate that much money to a political cause, as doing this may cause suspicions of corruption. If the food business was confident that they could survive the onslaught of this movement for pure food, then they would not have done this move. It just doesn’t seem reasonable to me.

To conclude, businesses should be responsible for taking actions on public opinion, as they will lose money otherwise. It is clear that from the perspective of both consumer and the business, it is beneficial for both sides to focus on current issues and businesses should take a stand into solving world issues, for they have the power to lead the way. Even if the businesses don’t want to, they need to attend to their consumers’ concerns, or risk falling.

The Poison Squad Chapter 8 response questions

1) In your opinion, what is the most disturbing line/section [in chapter 8 of the Poison Squad]? Why?
2) Meatpacking houses operated like this for many years. Why do you think it took so long to change the industry? Please cite evidence from The Poison Squad.
3) In the context of this excerpt, how does greed drive action? Cite evidence from this text, The Poison Squad, your own experience, and other literature, art, or history in your answer.

1. I think that the most disturbing line/section of this chapter is: “In a word, we saw meat shoveled from filthy wooden floors, piled on tables rarely washed, pushed from room to room in rotten box carts, in all of which processes it was in the way of gathering dirt, splinters, floor filth and expectoration of tuberculous and other diseased workers.” This really hit me because I can remember the time I accidentally tasted spoiled milk: it was unbearable and impossible to get the taste out of your mouth. I imagined the same thing with this meat: unbearable and impossible to make it better. I am quite surprised that people were eating their meat like this for years.

2. I think it took so long to change the industry because no one knew sanitary practices at the time and no one thought that these filthy thing they were doing actually had an effect on the meat they were processing. The quote I used in the first question just proves that. No one in that industry really knew what sanitation was, nor did they care, or have the energy to do so. Even after the pure food bill, they would probably have to renovate the whole thing, from the slaughter houses to even the packaging room, which would take a while.

3. Greed can drive action in many ways. But the actions don’t have to start filled with greed. They can start as decisions meant to be benevolent to the people. Take for example, communism out of all things. Did Karl Marx envision a future where one dictator-like leader would lead a people out of fear? No. He probably envisioned a happy people all living the same life. The only weakness to communism was the power given to the leader of the country, which was exposed by Joseph Stalin, who ruled with an iron fist. His greed drove actions to kill or torture anyone who disagreed with him, knowing that he would receive all the praise like some sort of demigod. Take Adolf Hitler. His greed to conquer the whole of Europe cost him when he decided to invade the Soviet Union. Same with Napoleon, again with Russia. So yeah, greed can influence actions and cloud someone’s vision to make the right decisions, which sometimes may be important to the people making the decisions.

The Pure Food Bill, showing how hard it is for a bill to become a law

1. A person/people suggest(s) a bill to a congressman/woman as an idea.
Harvey Wiley and the Federation of Women’s Clubs decide(s) to propose a pure-food bill to make sure that the food given to Americans are actually what they are. This group of people suggested the bill to congressman Waldon Heyburn, who soon thought it was a good idea and decided to present it to congress. But Heyburn was a bit stubborn. To quote the Poison Squad, “Wiley attempted to temper his expectaions, suggesting strategic concessions… Heyburn, as was typical, refused to compromise.”
2. The bill is presented to Congress.
Heyburn presented the bill to Congress and they decided to take it in consideration, although businesses wanted to remove any whiskey-related statements off the list and notified all congressmen. To quote the book, “The rectifiers’ chief lobbyist… notified every member of Congress that his members flatly insisted on removing any whiskey-labeling requirements from the legislation.”
3. The bill either goes into committee or it goes onto the floor for debate and voting. (Food Bill dies here)
The debate is fruitless, due to the fact that “the business of Congress was to take care of businessmen…” And this is where the bill dies, due to the lack of support for the bill in Congress due to, well, a reluctance to try and dampen American businesses in fear of damaging the economy.
4. The bill is voted on by one house, then the other house, if successful. 
But let’s just say the bill went on into the voting stage. This is self-explanatory, as the congressmen on one house will vote, then the other house will debate and vote on it. I believe that the bill has a better chance of getting through the House of Representatives due to the fact that the Senate has trended towards more wealthier people, thus resulting in more of a support towards American businesses. But either way, the bill would also probably die here as well, due to the Congress currently supporting economic growth over citizen health.
5. If, both houses agree on a majority, the president can either sign it or veto it.
The president, at the time, was President Theodore Roosevelt, who had never really had a good relationship with Wiley after the incident on the whiskey tariff, where Wiley disagreed with Roosevelt on an issue about the whiskey tariff, but avoided getting fired by the president by James Wilson, the secretary, who told Roosevelt he had been instructed to say this.Due to this unstable relationship, I could bet my money that he would veto this law and would have no chance of recovering due to the lack of support from Congress would make it highly unlikely that the bill would receive a veto override.

Life in Arizona: Month 1

Weather update in Arizona:

it’s still hot…

It is literally still capping at the 110’s at some point. Now, I’m more of a summer guy but 110? It’s just too much. I have sunburns for being at a swim meet for like 4 hours. That usually doesn’t happen to me, and even when I did get a sunburn, I felt zero pain. But this sunburn I could truly feel and absorb that rash-like feeling. It doesn’t bother me. It’s just different.

I’ve moved into a homestay now and I finally don’t have to Uber to go to school every day and pay nearly 50 dollars for a round trip. I only have to take one now around 2-3 times a month, which isn’t bad. My only problem with Uber is that apparently, some drivers don’t want to take minors, but it is inconsistent depending on the driver. Around 1/3 of the drivers tell me I’m too young. The other 2/3 say I can ride just fine. Then there was this one driver that said I had to be 16 to ride Uber, although most people say 18. So confusing and frustrating when I wait for literally at least ten minutes as a driver rejects me and I try to find a new one without letting Uber pick the same driver that just rejected me.

Okay, enough with the rant. I’ve gotten better at ping-pong, because I usually get to school early and have time to play on the school’s ping pong table. I’m around top-3 in my friend-group. When I return back to my hometown, I actually kind of want to play one of my friends in ping-pong now. Because I have some newfound skill that I didn’t know I had until now.

School’s going fine. There’s nothing to be said about the amount fo schoolwork that I have since it is still the beginning of the school year. Teachers are still in the early stages of their teaching, so this is still indecisive. Same with the grades. I’m looking forward to the fall break, when I plan to see my friends again back at home and dubbed it my “homecoming” to my friend. He didn’t get it until I told him. I can brag to my friends about how I can go to two school camping trips in a year and they’ll never have that same kind of experience because their school just won’t pull those kinds of stuff.

Otherwise, that’s it. Nothing else to be noted yet. Still getting into the ebb-and-flow of things. I can hope to post another one like this in my fall break to tell you about the second month of life in Arizona. It ain’t that bad here (except for the heat).

The School System’s Issues

I have always thought of learning as an experience and a process to give my mind food and exercise. But it is clear that our schools are built to force the food into our minds and exercise our brains either too little or too much. Schools also are failing to advance with the technology of today, making these facilities failing to meet the potential that the modern era has given them.

First, it’s clear that just thinking of schools makes you think of how strict our teachers were when you were at school. Now, some teachers may have been more lenient, but we all know that in school we are ordered to do things in some way and in this orderly fashion. This may give students a good guideline, but this system is outdated. This kind of “instructional-based work” is based on the ideals of the industrial revolution. This time was back when following instructions was more important than being innovative and creative. But in the modern world today, our ideals on a worker is different. People are rewarded for thinking outside the box, making an innovation, or making a discovery. Forcing students to do as the teacher says gives students no experience to be creative when they are pushed into the real world, making them less equipped to be higher-class workers.

Next, thinking of myself in school, I was always bored in school. Why? I was never given a chance or an incentive to challenge myself, and since I knew the topics taught to me already, I didn’t need to try much to get a good grade. This can also be the other way, as students with less knowledge of prerequisites can be left confused when topics more advanced than their level. This is not necessarily calling these students below level, it’s just some students require more time to learn a topic. It doesn’t mean that they’re stupid. But these students can fall into a cycle of being taught a topic, being confused due to the fact that they didn’t fully grasp the prerequisite yet, and then performing poorly in quizzes and tests, and repeat. And for the people who have already learned the topic? They are left with a zero-risk situation, as they are bored and can basically focus on something else without worrying about failing the quiz/test. I can relate to these people because that person was me. I didn’t have any reason to go through and study for a test, due to the fact that I could guarantee myself at least a 93%+ on my tests without any sort of extra schoolwork.

Finally, the process of lecturing is also a bit outdated as well. Teachers speaking in front of their students isn’t necessary bad but it also isn’t the best for the students. We find that lectures can be interesting for the first 5-10 minutes, but after that time, it gets boring. Important information can be lost due to our lack of an attention span. It isn’t exactly our fault either. It’s just in all human nature to have a low attention span, due to the fact that this kind of attention span could be a key survival tool. So why use just lecturing for your teaching when there are so many other tools that can do a better and more efficient job than lecturing can?

In the modern world today, it’s clear that schools have yet to catch up with the current times. Our schools today need to get out of old habits and ideals and push forward to a new age. If this doesn’t happen, our students could fall behind of time.

Class Prompt Topic 1. The Food Business

1. Should businesses be allowed to put anything in food to save time, money, etc.?
2. Should businesses have to disclose the materials that they place in food items?
3. In what ways can consumers influence companies to change their practices?

1. To answer this question, we have to look at this question from many different viewpoints. Let’s start with the easier one: the business’ point of view. They want to be able to put things in food that may save them time and money. That way, the business can make more of a profit. But from a consumer’s standpoint, this seems like a risky proposal. They don’t know what this might mean for the quality of their food and the health of their food. So should businesses be allowed to put anything in their food to save money and time? To me, I think foods with new ingredients in them should be tested before being released to the general public. This way, consumers like myself can trust that this product will not harm us due to the fact that it has passed the test of safety.

2. This is a matter of brand safety and consumer trust. Should consumers have the right to know what’s in their food so they know what they are exposing their body to? Of course. But the business believes that they really don’t have a true incentive to put the ingredients of their food on a label. Think about it. Other brands may be able to, with enough tinkering, fully copy and clone a business’ recipe on a certain product, which could be devastating for the company that just got copied. But does this really matter? Should Amazon be scared if they found out that Walmart had copied their cupcake recipe to perfection? To me, big corporation vs big corporation shouldn’t lead to a bad result. They are too big to be take down significantly with one product. But for small businesses being copied by bigger corporations? The small business loses, as they might not recover from such a large hit on one of their products. So what’s the answer here? I think that there should be disclosures on bigger companies’ foods, but a more lenient disclosure for the smaller businesses.

​3. Consumers are very powerful in their ability to force a company to do something about their products. This is because, well, without the consumer, there is no business! There is no money to be earned when no one will pay the money to give the business a profit. So consumers can “boycott” a product in a way, promising that they will not buy a product until it gets changed in a way or not. Consumers can, if extreme enough, quit going to the store in general to send an even bigger statement. We, as the consumers, are powerful in a way that we can influence businesses with our collective actions. And if the business can’t cater to the needs of the consumer, well, the business will fall and fall hard.

Life in Arizona: First Week

I have made it into a private school I have wanted to get into in Arizona. I have never lived in Arizona in my life. The only real time I have actually been there as when I was touring there. So let me tell you about the first few days at the school and the conditions here in Arizona.

First off, the weather. It’s super hot. Deadly hot. If you think that going outside in 90 degree weather will give you heat stroke, well, you’re about to get played, because Arizona is 110 degrees hot on some of the more hotter days of the summer. Since my school dismisses at 3:15, It’s always hot out when I go to call an Uber. I have to stay at the university bookstore next door to stay cool. It is bad. In truth though, I am really looking forward to winter though, because to me it’ll feel like autumn or early spring to me due to my exposure to northeastern US climate.

The private school I am going to is pretty good. It’s a school for middle school and high school students for gifted kids. It’s right next to the western campus of Arizona State University, meaning easy access to college courses. This also means many services are provided to us students, such as better school lunches. It also means smaller class sizes meaning more engagement between students. It seems that within a couple of days I’ve already become a healthy part of the culture itself.

So those are the real things I wanted to say about life in Arizona currently. It honestly has only been the first week, so I am looking forward to what comes next. I’ll probably post one of these each month updating on the weather and conditions and school life. So, yeah, post 1.

Competition In Schools: Quality Vs Quantity

I think most of us have been in that class in school, where everyone’s getting that class lesson, when all of a sudden, that troublemaker makes a joke to the person next to them. Or he’s not paying attention at all. Of course, we can all act like we don’t care at all, but we do. The kid gets in trouble, we all look towards the kid, and class is wasted. It’s a vicious cycle. Bad thing happens, teacher verbally tells to stop, class wasted. Everyone is trying to just get by to at least pass this class. But it’s hard to do so when this happens so often. So how do we fix this?

I think that the source of the problem is not much motivation to do well. If students just get through their core classes with a 70, well, then they’re through. This usually isn’t that hard to do. Some people would even say it’s difficult even just to try to fail. But making classwork harder won’t really make a difference. That just results in frustration towards the topics and even less motivation to do well. So what if we instead try to pick up something else: the competition?

So what do I mean by competition? I mean that maybe schools should implement more harsher passing grades, or, more extreme, just taking the top 70 percent of the class out of middle school, then the top 50 percent of the class out of high school, then the top 80 percent out of college, or something like that. If we use methods like this, maybe we can get through to more youth and children that schools is a priority to help them in their life. But there’s a problem with this method. It’s slightly an elitist ideal. If school has one clear goal, it‘s to try to get as much people to succeed as possible. Unfortunately, these methods would make it harder to produce more for the workforce. So, as this always beat my swim team for years, quantity over quality (don’t worry, we started winning later).

So is competition the right way to stir up student’s ability to just grind and study? Maybe. But is it fit for the ideals on which school was built on? No. If you thought that these solutions seemed at least good for serving a purpose, well, it may work efficiently. But it doesn’t morally feel right, which is why it was never implemented in school. Because it seemed elitist. And elitist ideals just go against many things, but it goes against one word mostly: equality. Thanks for reading this thing if you did.

Television News Media: Biased?

News sources today, whether on television, paper, or even on the internet, has been given trust from the people who listen or read their news channel/organization. But recent times are showing that maybe we shouldn’t be trusting our news that we are seeing as much as we are currently. Is this true? Well, I certainly think so.

First, we can see that news channels like NBC, ABC, FOX, are not news specialists. They earn revenue off of ads. This means, to attract companies to place advertisements on their channels or websites, they must attract viewers. But how do you attract viewers with the same old news that might not be entertaining every single day? After all, the news is unpredictable. You will not be able to tell when an engaging story comes up to be super attractive. So what do the news broadcasters do? Well, they don’t wait for stories to pop up. They choose uniqueness over genuine facts.

Some news stories such as politics are important to hear, such as the president’s decisions or Congress’s decisions, but the rest is mostly over-juicing quirky and weird stories. Take for example the Tide Pod phenomenon at around 2017-2018. Although the news channels were making a huge deal about how eating Tide Pods was this new “challenge,” but it wasn’t as bad as you think. Actually in that period, there were more calls to the poison control center concerning overdoses of children’s vitamins, I repeat, vitamins that those involving poison. Most people aren’t that stupid. Or about how plane crashes or shark attacks were ravaging the death counts higher and higher, although instances of these happening were decreasing every year. Or even poverty levels, although many people make a big deal about how poverty is a real problem and how it’s going to get bigger, but in Africa, it is rapidly decreasing. Almost every weird or “new” story usually doesn’t affect many people.

So in the end, who wins in these scenarios? It isn’t us. We usually get bad reactions off of these usually negatively juiced stories. It’s the advertisements and the broadcasters that win. They get their money either directly, or indirectly through ads. So the next time you watch the news, be wary of what these broadcasting stations’ real goals are.