Silver Mettle

We live in the era of Big Data and nobody does Big Data better than Nate Silver. For those who don't recall, Silver correctly predicted the 2012 Presidential election results in all fifty states. Stat guru Silver, founder of fivethirtyeight.com, had become a fixture at The New York Times with his high traffic blog. Silver recently defected to ESPN to expand his horizons and his following with the ABC-Disney platform to cover sports, politics, economics, and cultural trends.

Although we don't recognize them, data analytics have become a part of everyday life. Catalogs that come to your home are often individually targeted to your shopping preferences. County by county voting analysis identified the impact of racial bias in presidential election. Internet websites target advertising to web surfing habits. Studies have shown racial hiring bias by examining comparable resumes with differing names attached. Data analytics can identify trends and patterns, preference and bias.

Data analytics have become widespread in sports. One of Celtics' Coach Brad Stevens' first hires was his data analyst, Drew Cannon. Within our middle school basketball program, we use data analytics to evaluate total player contributions using our proprietary modification of Lee Rose's Performance Rating System. Big Data is here to stay.

I recently finished reading the autobiography of Geno Auriemma, Geno: In Pursuit of Perfection. A UCONN administrator told a player in 1985 of their intention to hire the best woman coach available. The player answered, "why can't we get the best coach available?" Auriemma, an assistant at the University of Virginia got the job, and the rest is history...eight NCAA championships, the fastest track to eight hundred victories, and an Olympic Gold Medal.

Silver has shown the power of Big Data analytics to find patterns amidst chaos. Big Data has shown its ability to extract patterns of preference and bias, such as the underrepresentation of women and minorities in American faculty. A recent Forbes report describes how Big Data drives better hiring. Of course that begs a question, how do we want to give somebody the business?