From: Ian Ayres [Ian.Ayres@yale.edu]

Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 12:31 PM

To: 'Ian Ayres'

Subject: More Ayres Spam

My new book, Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way to Be Smart (Bantam 2007) is just about to land (Aug. 28 is the official pub date). As I said last time, I try to show how empirical methods are leaking out of the academy and impacting real world decisions in business, education, medicine, government and many others arenas. (Moneyball was just the tip of the iceberg).

Read the first chapter

You can seen me looking surprisingly polished in this interview on YouTube.com.

I've also put together a bunch of fun prediction tools (just plug in your X values and out pops a prediction) that will let you:

Predict How Long You'll Live (Northwest Mutual)

Predict Your Probability of Divorce (Ayres)

Predict Your Child's Due Date (Ayres)

Predict Your Child's Adult Height (University of Saskatchewan)

Predict Number of Months You Will Stick With High Credit Card APR (after initial teaser rate expires) (Ayres)

Predict Future Airline Fares (FareCast)

Predicts the Market Value of Your Home (Zillow)

Predict the Quality of Bordeaux (Ayres)

Predict Your Next Move in Rock-Paper-Scissors (Chappie)

Predicts the Success of a Book Title (Lulu Titlescorer)

Predict Demographics of Who Will Use a Webpage (Microsoft adCenter)

And a whole lot more. If you have any favorite regressions that you'd like me to turn into a plug and play applet, please email them to me.

You can already pre-order a copy of Super Crunchers on Amazon.

Popular Press:

Do You Have A Better Idea?, Parade (March 25, 2007) (with Barry Nalebuff). This article has Why Not? ideas for the masses.

My favorite idea among these innovation haikus comes from Daniel Siegelman's second-grade class in Amherst, Mass. Dan's teacher installed a decibel traffic light that switches from green to yellow to red as the level of ambient noise increases. The class got a lot quieter. The “talk light” looks just like a regular traffic light and can be adjusted to go off anywhere between 40 and 120 decibels (a washing machine is about 75 decibels).

Amtrak could install such lights as reminders in its quiet cars (where cell phones are banned) or even in all of its train cars. If someone speaks too loudly, a light on top of the seat ahead turns on, so that the talker (and any fellow passenger) sees that the volume is too high. The idea also could work in restaurants, where noise can escalate to the point where, as Yogi Berra might say, “it’s so loud, nobody can hear anything.” A discreet warning-light table decoration could do the trick.

You Found a Better Idea, Parade (July 8, 2007) (with Barry Nalebuff). The masses respond. My favorite was having PINs for credit-cards to reduce use by thieves.

Down With Plutocrats and Fat Cat Donors, Slate www.slate.com/id/2169025 (June 25, 2007) (with Bruce Ackerman). In this piece, we point out the sharp disjuncture between public support and probability of winning that is caused by disproportionate contributions in the money primary.

I also cranked out two radio commentaries for Marketplace:

Did you use that gift card or rebate?, Public Radio Commentary for Marketplace (August 9, 2007) (Audio) Retailers should disclose what proportion of consumers fail to cash in their rebates or gift cards. Or better yet, retailers should disgorge to charity or government any unclaimed dollars.

For Many, Forms Could Be a Lot Less Taxing, Marketplace (April 16, 2007) (Audio) This commentary extolls a great idea (and hard-fought crusade) of Joe Bankman. The IRS should send you your tax form already filled out and you should just send back corrections. Taxpreparers for some reason don't like this idea.

I also mention the idea in this series of YLS faculty suggestions to the next president. Streamline Tax Filing, Yale Law Report 48 (Summer 2007).

I’ve also published a couple of Why Not? columns in Forbes with Barry Nalebuff:

Experiment , Forbes (September 03, 2007). Businesses should be running lots more randomized controlled studies to figure out what causes what. Randomized tests eliminate subtle biases that can corrupt comparisons between groups. Randomly accepting some of your rejects can help you test whether you've set the cutoff correctly.

Cupid and Colleges, Forbes 87 (May 9, 2007). Barry and I argue for a way for college candidates to signal their preferences. A rose by any other name . . .

And finally, I contributed this Written Statement, Disparity Studies as Evidence of Discrimination in Federal Contracting, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (May 2006). In this statement, I explain a bit about my involvement in the effort to "mend not end" affirmative action in U.S. procurement and what narrow tailoring demands.

Here's to a few last splashes in the pool.

Ian Ayres

William K. Townsend Professor

Yale Law School

PO Box 208215

New Haven, CT 06520

203.432.7101 (o), 203.432.4769 (f), 203.624.5654 (h), 203.415.5587 (c)

ian.ayres@yale.edu