In a world increasingly ruled by numbers and algorithms, award-winning
journalist Chris Jones makes a compelling case for a more personal
approach to analytical thinking.
THE EYE TEST is a necessary course correction, a call for a more
balanced, personal approach to problem-solving. Award-winning journalist
Chris Jones makes the case for the human element--for what smart,
practiced, devoted people can bring to situations that have proved
resistant to analytics. Jones shares what he's learned from an army of
extraordinary talents, including some of the best doctors, executives,
athletes, meteorologists, magicians, designers, astrophysicists, and
detectives in the world. There are lessons in their mastery.
Of course, there is a place for numbers in decision-making. No baseball
player should be judged by his jawline. But the analytics revolution
sparked by Michael Lewis's Moneyball now threatens to replace one kind
of absurdity with another. We have developed a blind faith in the
machine, the way a driver overly reliant on his GPS might be led off the
edge of a cliff. Not all statistical analysis is sound. Algorithms
aren't infallible, and spreadsheets aren't testaments. Trust in them too
much, and they risk becoming instruments of destruction rather than
understanding.
Worse, data's supremacy in our daily lives has led to a dangerous strain
of anti-expertise: the belief that every problem is a math problem, and
anyone given access to the right information will find the right answer.
That taste doesn't matter, experience doesn't matter, creativity doesn't
matter. That we can't believe our eyes, no matter how much they've seen.
THE EYE TEST serves as a reminder that if beauty is less of a virtue in
the age of analytics, a good eye still is. This book is a celebration of
our greatest beholders--and an absorbing, inspiring guide for how you
might become one, too.
