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The Eye Test: A Case for Human Creativity in the Age of Analytics

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In a world increasingly ruled by numbers and algorithms, award-winning journalist Chris Jones makes a compelling case for a more personal approach to analytical thinking​.THE EYE TEST is a necessary course correction, a call for a more balanced, personal approach to problem-solving. Award-winning journalist Chris Jones makes the case for the human element—for what smart, practiced, devoted people can bring to situations that have proved resistant to analytics. Jones shares what he’s learned from an army of extraordinary talents, including some of the best doctors, executives, athletes, meteorologists, magicians, designers, astrophysicists, and detectives in the world. There are lessons in their mastery.

Of course, there is a place for numbers in decision-making. No baseball player should be judged by his jawline. But the analytics revolution sparked by Michael Lewis’s Moneyball now threatens to replace one kind of absurdity with another. We have developed a blind faith in the machine, the way a driver overly reliant on his GPS might be led off the edge of a cliff. Not all statistical analysis is sound. Algorithms aren’t infallible, and spreadsheets aren’t testaments. Trust in them too much, and they risk becoming instruments of destruction rather than understanding.

Worse, data’s supremacy in our daily lives has led to a dangerous strain of anti-expertise: the belief that every problem is a math problem, and anyone given access to the right information will find the right answer. That taste doesn’t matter, experience doesn’t matter, creativity doesn’t matter. That we can’t believe our eyes, no matter how much they’ve seen.

THE EYE TEST serves as a reminder that if beauty is less of a virtue in the age of analytics, a good eye still is. This book is a celebration of our greatest beholders—and an absorbing, inspiring guide for how you might become one, too.

Audiobook

Published January 11, 2022

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About the author

Chris Jones

429 books14 followers
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

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5 stars
67 (26%)
4 stars
108 (43%)
3 stars
55 (21%)
2 stars
19 (7%)
1 star
2 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
Profile Image for Susan's Reviews.
1,138 reviews607 followers
May 9, 2022
Can an algorithm accurately predict the success of a creative production?



I found the various anecdotes about the movers and shakers in our creative industries very entertaining. Of course - in these modern times - there is an algorithm to predict the success of just about anything.




Jones makes the case for the human gut reaction or intuition, something that a hollow algorithm can't ever hope to compete with. Sometimes you need a savvy human being with good instincts and experience in the field to be able to spot a winner.



Highly readable. This would make a great audiobook because the tone was often pleasantly conversational. Took me a while to get through it because I am not into sports and haven't watched TV in years, but it was entertaining all the same.

I'm rating this one a 3.8 out of 5. My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
Profile Image for Matt.
21 reviews5 followers
February 12, 2022
I'm not sure if story-driven journalism was the best way to make the case described in the subtitle. Each chapter offers multiple examples of people who used their own trained eyes or their own intuitions to outdo the algorithms that might have otherwise held authority. But the compilation of stories eventually feels like a scattershot attempt to debate a vaguely defined opponent. It casts a sense of irony across the book that a fuzzy argument is accusing big data of being fuzzy, too.
52 reviews
February 11, 2022
It was an interesting topic and had some interesting stories, but a bit scattered. The topics of which I have some knowledge showed a lack of depth. Makes me wonder about the topics with which I am less familiar.
321 reviews1 follower
March 10, 2022
I now know what a book would look like if the Rain Man wrote it. This seemed to be a compilation of disparate stories that I could not tie a string to. I moved the score up to 3 stars due to the excellent footnotes.
Profile Image for Zach Koenig.
692 reviews6 followers
June 5, 2022
Right now, we seem to be living in a culture that trends towards the "by the numbers" approach. From medicine to Wall Street to Major League Baseball, the human element of decisions or transactions is often pushed aside for the statistical analysis. In "The Eye Test", author Chris Jones makes a case--and a compelling one at that--that numbers can only take us so far. If the human element is removed from any equation, the outcome usually suffers.

Jones doesn't rail against or hate numbers in any sense. In fact, he completely understands and appreciates why they can be so appealing--for their ability to take inherent human bias out of decision-making. This is often a good thing--but only when used in moderation.

Jones looks at a broad swath of areas--medicine, stocks, sports, weather, to name a few--and shows examples of how only using numbers to proceed forward can produce unwanted or non-ideal outcomes. The overall point ends up being that numbers are great at estimating the future based on past events, but the world around us is often highly volatile and not prone to following any set patterns. So, because a machine (even the best AI) cannot make accurate decisions in the face of changing parameters, the far more adaptable human brain/intellect is needed.

I ultimately found "The Eye Test" to be one of the most fascinating books I've read in quite some time--almost a must-read in today's society. I admit to coming into the experience simply as someone intrigued by the analytical wave sweeping Major League Baseball at the current time, and while that topic is certainly given its due I found my horizons significantly broadened in so many other aspects of how analytics must be balanced with human intuition.
Profile Image for Luke Carlin.
7 reviews2 followers
May 19, 2022
The title is slightly misleading, in my opinion. This is not a book against analytics. This is also not a book telling you to trust your gut. My takeaway from the book is that not all great decisions are made from analytics, nor are they made from hunches of experience. The author tells stories about both. It is about self-awareness and honoring the human element of interactions. It is about humility and confidence. In a world run by numbers, the author tells compelling stories that made me think about how ethics, now more than ever, play an essential role in delivering and consuming information. The author challenges us to think about our strengths and weaknesses as humans while also thinking about the strengths and weaknesses of analytics. How can we combine the best of both to have a significant positive impact on others?
Profile Image for Terri Jones.
2,367 reviews44 followers
February 14, 2023
I first "met" this author via his Twitter account, which was always unerringly kind, and observant, and often hilarious. When the price for his book dropped, I bought it. It's easily worth more than four bucks, so if you're interested, go get it.

I, being me plus more anxiety, didn't read every word, just FYI. Here are the deets:
ENTERTAINMENT was good. Interesting, insightful, and encouraging.
I skimmed the SPORTS chapter to avoid falling asleep, sorry, author.
WEATHER was fantastic. I loved every word.
I got through almost half the POLITICS section before abandoning it. Evil makes me too angry.
Ditto CRIME, particularly criminals in uniform; I skipped most of this one.
To my delight, MONEY is a fantastic chapter. And one of the footnotes cracked me up.
MEDICINE: You'd think the forged $100 bill would be in money, but nope. :) This one was fascinating, an excellent place to wrap up the point of the book.

Highly recommended.
Profile Image for Howard.
283 reviews4 followers
September 15, 2022
I like his concept that analytics and AI can't replace the way people see things in a more objective way. I think he's trying to prove it by example. so he has tons of examples, but pretty much no theory. I didn't even know his meaning of "The Eye Test" until I was about 3/4 into the book. great examples, but little instruction.
Profile Image for Kaetrin.
3,050 reviews182 followers
October 7, 2022
Really interesting. The narration by the author was pretty good but not quite to the standard of a professional narrator.

This was an Audible Daily Deal. I think I bought it for $4 or $5. No regrets!
Profile Image for Frank.
146 reviews7 followers
February 5, 2023
This book was recommended to me by a former student and was an excellent read. As an Instructor of Business Intelligence, Data Analysis, and related topics - a challenge is to ensure that students think critically about the results they produce.
This book balances the love of numbers and data with what makes us human - I enjoyed it immensely.
Profile Image for Diane B.
504 reviews3 followers
April 21, 2022
Excellent evidence is provided to demonstrate that although AI is powerful, it can't yet replace human creativity and insight.

Big data and analytics are powerful tools, but they are just that.

The book is preaching to the converted, but what a collection of facts! Drawn from sports, movie making, finance, politics, knitting, cookery, climate change, casino gaming, concrete production, criminology, forensics, health sciences, litigation, weather forecasting and even the Price is right.

References to the expert interrogation of serial killer Corporal Russell Williams led me to view excerpts available on You Tube
https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=lj7QRP37Wn0&ab_channel=CBCNews

I started jumping around reading this, although it is loosely grouped in chapters it also follows a more narrative style.

Fascinating facts and even more interesting questions.
Profile Image for Sarah Jane.
190 reviews4 followers
Shelved as 'abandoned'
April 4, 2022
I picked this up because I am interested in creativity, I read for half an hour and it seemed to be about movie making. I’ve never seen the baseball movie that kept being by referenced, haven’t seen any of the movies mentioned, haven’t heard of any of the names that were dropped. Abandoned, not for me.
Profile Image for Cami.
Author 2 books16 followers
August 4, 2022
What in the world did I just read? I read the first chapter, skipped the one on Sports, read another chapter, skimmed another... and I still have no idea what this book is about. It has a lot of anecdotes that are strung together without much reason. The writing is terrible.
Author 22 books19 followers
February 14, 2023
My rating for this would be 3.5 stars if I could give it half stars. I'm rounding up as I did enjoy reading it.

The Eye Test is a strange book, but enjoyably strange. It's a non-fiction that seems to be about creativity and how there is something beyond analytics, except it isn't really against analytics. Nor is it completely about trusting gut instinct above all else. The problem - or perhaps some may see it as something very interesting - is that it's hard to say what the book really is about.

It's a series of anecdotes with several areas looked at - broadly, entertainment, sports, finance, weather, crime, medicine, politics. Jones says he makes the case for good taste in entertainment, passion in sports, adaptability in weather, curiosity in politics, humanity in crime, inventiveness in money and reverence in medicine. However, I'd say that the book is much more scattergun than that.

We feel ourselves hopping through all sorts of different stories and different "cases" are made, overlapping a lot. A lot of the time you are left to draw your own conclusions - not at all a bad thing.

What I think are the strengths of this book:

At the top: definitely the telling of interesting stories. I don't know how accurate they are, but there are plenty of interesting ones and they entertain. The book starts off with the entertainment section and a lot of people will be familiar with these references and like to hear the stories. The Penn and Teller stuff really drew me in.

I am not very interested in sports but I actually liked the sports bit - because of how it was told.

The section on the Price is Right (which is a game show I personally love to hate) was good because of how it told both sides of the story and let you draw your own conclusions.

Next: The amount of detail. I'd like to say great research but I'm not sure how accurate any of it is, not having checked. But the little details make for great storytelling.

The footnotes are also very useful.

The wide variety of examples to support Jones' thesis works well, and they are pretty good areas to cover.

Jones' personal interest and enthusiasm is unashamed and he even puts his family life into the book, completely disclosed. I felt this made the book powerful, bringing his passion to the book. Of course, one realises it also means he's probably not a very impartial writer here but as this book does not seem to attempt a lot of analysis/argument, that doesn't seem to matter too much.

On the cons side: The approach of the book feels scattergun, at times messy and unfocused and repetitive. It doesn't always seem clear exactly what Jones wanted to achieve. While it's fair enough that he might not want to draw all the conclusions for his readers, the subtitle does say it's "A case for ..." and it wasn't always clear how the case was being made.
Profile Image for Jeff.
1,285 reviews7 followers
September 18, 2022
This book claims to base the case of human creativity over AI. I feel like the author over-emphasized popular AI methods like facial recognition, crime pattern prediction, and all the fluff around deep fakes and deep fake videos. Under all this are many techniques that the author actually recognizes but seems to diminish. The author recognizes that in scientifically controlled studies, doctors faced with a difficult diagnosis perform better when an AI presents a set of likely diagnoses. The AI is not always right, but the doctors that consider AI input are much more likely to come up with the correct diagnosis, and presumably the best treatment plan. There is clear value in finding a balance between human programmed AI and human expertise... The eye test is a step towards evaluating this conflict, but it is not the last word by any means.
Profile Image for Andreea Bota.
3 reviews24 followers
January 18, 2022
Jones found a new red thread through all the reporting he's done in his years at Esquire - the uncaptured by algorithms creative genius of humans. He brings a lot of arguments (fact-checked, of course; prepare for generous footnotes as the author even gives heads up about them) and highlights something everyone has been raving about for some years - data. And he makes a beautiful case for the imperfections of data.
I will recommend it to everyone that blindly believes in data and algorithms (AI) without questioning them. But also to those that are not allowing time for the ethics discussion and how important this is in how we train AI, and the imperfections of the subjectivity with which we analyse data and let it lead us to all-time-casual events.
15 reviews
June 6, 2022
The eye test is a book about the use of analytics in the world and the pros and cons of using them. It is about looking at things from multiple perspectives is the only way to truly understand what they are. “Sometimes, our fates are no longer ours to decide, and we can only grip our fists until our knuckles turn white and hang on for the rest of the ride.”I really like this quote because it is a good metaphor for the fact that some things just can't be put into a box, which is really what a lot of the book is about. I really liked this book because it gave me a new perspective on how we see things in the world. It also helped me to understand analytics vs human intuition means. I would recommend this book to someone who is interested in numbers and data.
September 8, 2022
This book is to magazine journalism what most PhD disserations are to research journal papers: a bunch of separate, previously-published works stapled together with a thinly-spread theme woven throughout. Like many business books these days, this one often gets lost in anectdotes. I think maybe the thesis is: because these particular people did these interesting things without AI / Machine Learning, humans are still relevant. Some of these people you may have heard of; at least two have mainstream biopics out there. There all pretty interesting stories, told in a casual, accessible manner, by a journalist from my home province. How do you like your coffee?
755 reviews18 followers
September 13, 2022
This is a compelling argument about creativity trumping analytics. Whichever side you are on, you will fght enlightening information and interesting anecdotes to prove the author's point that statistics can be used in many ways and don't always reflect the true picture. Artificial Intelligence is a programme, and all programmes have potential flaws. I gave this book a four rather than a five because I found that I felt distrcted with some of the anecdotes because I couldn't figure out their purpose until the end of the story. It's better to invert the structure in a book like this. Make the point and then follow it with the anecdote that shows the point.
3 reviews1 follower
January 29, 2022
It’s a great celebration of the human mind and the creativity and expertise it can develop by doing, not just playing the odds. It’s a strong reminder that humanity needs human beings and human judgments willing to take great chances. Serves as a great reminder that you can’t always detach yourself from something to make judgments and decisions. In a world of people you actually sometimes need the opposite.
306 reviews3 followers
February 12, 2022
Gladwell-esque compilation of ideas regarding our society's increasing reliance on analytics to solve problems. The author asks when old-fashioned human ingenuity still isn't superior. I love this writer, and the only reason this isn't a five-star review from me is because I read and loved every magazine feature he wrote about the subjects of this book. He writes like an artist paints, though, and I'll happily continue to read everything he does.
Profile Image for kaitlin.
14 reviews2 followers
February 23, 2022
Really enjoyed this as a non-technical read, but excellent way to think through some of the technical elements of what I do day-to-day. The examples of the Affinity Gap and using predictive modeling for something as much of a moving target as affections were poignant, even if the writing was occasionally too long-winded. Large sections of chapters were easy to skim. Couldn't find the book version on GoodReads, only the audiobook, but I read the hard copy through NYPL.
191 reviews
October 3, 2022
I really enjoyed this book. I would have given it 5 stars but there was more adult language than necessary. The premise of the book is over reliance on Algorithms may lead to really bad outcomes. Better to make sure the given information passes the "eye test". This is a common theme with Big Data but definitely worth repeating. Often the choice is presented as an OR scenario. This or that but in reality it should be an AND. Great book overall
Profile Image for Brendan Brooks.
469 reviews5 followers
January 19, 2022
"Algorithms are a vaccination for bravery"

Fantastic, audiobook was very strong. Really recommend this. A call for people to trust their experience, intuition, knowledge, creativity, and imagination over algorithms and AI. As someone who likes to think in formulae when making decisions, this is a fresh change. Likely to contribute to a change in how I approach decisions. A passionate plea.
Profile Image for Darin.
188 reviews2 followers
October 5, 2022
Lots of really good insights, marred by (ironically enough) the author's biases, both recency (in medicine, where several COVID conclusions have collapsed in the interim) and politically (which pretty much self-destructs that particular chapter under its own refutation), but there are so many quality insights that it's still worth your time if you have a discerning mind.
Profile Image for Sean Patrick.
112 reviews7 followers
January 10, 2023
An interesting collection of anecdotes on people who have filled the gaps that numbers and analytics are unable to - however, I think while the stories were interesting, the takeaway ultimately wasn’t. Yes, numbers and algorithms can only go so far. But this book was less of a how to, and more of a look what some extraordinary people did. I enjoyed reading it, but not sure I will come back to it
5 reviews
May 13, 2023
Interesting read but the premise is a bit unclear

This book is a pleasant and breezy read with interesting stories but I was left wondering throughout what the central premise of the book is. What is the eye test? It was never really clear to me, even at the end of the book. Pleasant read, though.
312 reviews3 followers
September 23, 2022
Good examples and clearly made the point - there’s a lot at risk if we rely on numbers and data to drive decisions. The author did reference a lot of books that I am interested in reading as a result, but I was hoping for a little more from this.
Profile Image for Jay Reddick.
25 reviews2 followers
January 1, 2023
Chris Jones remains one of my favorite writers. This book winds many of his most interesting magazine subjects (the magician Teller, pitcher Barry Zito and the $100 bill, among many others) into a loose appreciation of the human element in decision-making.
Profile Image for Sarah.
480 reviews10 followers
March 13, 2023
THE book for workforce managers.

Especially if your new boss is undermining you.

Especially if you’re a woman.

Especially if you’ve always known what you are doing until someone tries to silence you.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews

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