Keynote speaker

Ian Ayres - economist, professor and author of best-selling book Super Crunchers

"Why thinking-by-numbers is the new way to be smart"

Ian Ayres is a pre‑eminent expert on new methods of prediction and decision-making that are not only changing the way choices are made but the choices themselves. He calls it ‘Super Crunching’ – analysing massive databases to influence real-world decisions.

At SPSS Directions 2008, he will be taking a leaf from his new book, Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-by-Numbers is the New Way to Be Smart, and will speak about:

• How and why these predictive techniques work
• How decision makers are applying them to business and just about everything else
• The impact that predictive techniques will have on our lives and on the traditional decision-makers who rely on experience and intuition.

Ian Ayres is the William K. Townsend Professor at Yale Law School and a Professor at Yale’s School of Management.

He is a columnist for Forbes magazine, a regular commentator on US public radio’s Marketplace, and regularly writes for The New York Times. His research has been featured on television shows such as Prime Time Live, Oprah and Good Morning America and in Time and Vogue magazines.
Professor Ayres has been ranked as one of the most prolific and most-cited law professors of his generation.

 

 

A conversation with Jack Noonan
President and Chief Executive Officer, SPSS Inc.

Kick-off the conference with SPSS President and CEO Jack Noonan. Having just marked his fifteenth year at SPSS, Jack is one of the longest sitting, non-founding CEOs of a technology company.
Jack’s longevity at SPSS is based on the transformation he has driven, taking a ‘one product’ statistical software company and turning it into a globally recognised market leader with multiple product lines – all serving the emerging predictive analytics market.

In this session, you’ll hear how Jack has evolved the company’s vision from ‘Real Stats, Real Easy’ to ‘The Predictive Enterprise’. In the process he has extended what the company does from delivering information to changing organisational processes; from event-based analysis to real-time analytics; and from return on investment at the analyst level to enterprise ROI. This is your chance to hear straight from Jack himself what SPSS is up to and where the company is going.