Heuristics in Analytics: A Practical Perspective of What Influences Our Analytical World

Acknowledgments

I started writing this book in 2011, first in Dublin as a visiting researcher, and then with Oi Communication in Brazil. During the commute from Niteroi to Rio de Janeiro (usually by bus or ferry), I read three books. Actually I read more than three, but these three impacted the desire to write this book. The first one was The New Know: Innovation Powered by Analytics.1 Thornton May brilliantly explored the power of analytics to solve business problems, allowing companies to innovate. The book really gives us a sense of how important analytics is and how crucial it is to companies nowadays. However, as most of the books do, it describes what goes right. As with a formula, if we properly select the variables, we may get the expected result. Unfortunately, analytics is not a science. It is based on science, but it is also an art. Maybe analytics is really about the art of how to use science to solve problems. But anyway, this book was an inspiration. So, my first acknowledgment is to Thornton May.

The second book was Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell.2 This book sticks to you. I missed my bus stop many times because of it. It shows how often we make decisions without thinking. Let me rephrase that: How often we make decisions thinking we are thinking about these decisions. In a flash, when required, we capture information in our brain, we gather it appropriately, weighing the pros and cons, and just then—we make the decision. Sometimes ...