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Sunday, July 5. 2015

Data vs. Hunches


More and more decisions, from the music business to the sports field, are being delegated to data. But where does that leave our intuition?  With stories about John Hammond. Among others, he discovered Billy Holiday, Benny Goodman, and Bob Dylan.


I can hit the windshield of a fast-moving car with a snowball, but I can't do the math of it.

Posted by The News Junkie in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 13:56 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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Good data makes for better "hunches".
#1 GoneWithTheWind on 2015-07-05 20:41 (Reply)
Since f=ma, I bet that you really can do the math.
#2 N Danielson on 2015-07-05 22:52 (Reply)
there is a mathematical equation for your snowball hitting a moving car, I just don't know it
#3 Dennis on 2015-07-05 23:16 (Reply)
Well, I actually could do the math, but it would do little to improve my ability to hit the windshield. Knowing the exact time, speed, and direction to throw doesn't mean I could achieve that any better than I could based simply on my internal judgement of the relative motion (and it doesn't take me 5 minutes of working out the equations!) Our ability to perform tasks like this is really quite amazing.
#4 Formerly known as Skeptic on 2015-07-06 00:23 (Reply)
My cat can jump and catch a flying bug in her forepaws. Same thing as the snowball-car thing backwards, or mirror image, or something.
#5 BillH on 2015-07-06 09:38 (Reply)
I doubt that birds* know the first thing about aerodynamics of flight. Nature bypasses all that fairly well.

*not to mention flies.
#6 jay on 2015-07-06 18:55 (Reply)

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