PR ED IC TIVE A N A LY T I C S
Most swans are white:
Living in a predictive society
My view – and Siegel’s,
I would guess – is that
this predictive activity
has generally been good
for humankind. In the
context of healthcare,
crime and terrorism, it
can save lives. In the
context of advertising,
using predictions is more
efficient … In politics, it
seems to reward those
candidates who respect
the scientific method.
BY THOMAS H.
DAVENPORT
62
|
Eric Siegel’s book – “Predictive Analytics: The
Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die”–
deals with quantitative efforts to predict human behavior. One of the earliest efforts to do that was in
World War II. Norbert Wiener, the fat