The Analytics Age
Stephen Few, Perceptual Edge
I was put in the mood for this conference just a few nights ago by an encounter at my local neighborhood wine bar. I noticed that a young fellow sitting near me was studying a math text, so I asked about his studies. He told me that he’s in a political science doctoral program at U. C. Berkeley and that just returned from Ann Arbor where he spent the entire summer studying statistics. When I mentioned that I was leaving the next day for Chicago to speak at a SAS conference, his eyes lit up and he asked “Do you know their product called JMP?” I told him that I was in fact going to a JMP conference, he became visibly excited and exclaimed: “That product JMP is statistical porn.” He meant this as a great compliment--something along the lines of “JMP gives me free and easy access to all my wildest statistical fantasies.
