Apple Is Not America’s Favorite Pie

I just watched this 2014 TED Talk by Kenneth Cukier, who at the time was the Data Editor of The Economist magazine. In about 15 minutes, he tries to show how bigger data is better data and will be a big driver of human advancement.

For example, my family and I just ate Thanksgiving dinner, and we had both apple pie and pumpkin pie for dessert. Incredibly, Cukier shows us that apple is not the most popular pie flavor in America! We just always thought it was because the majority of 12-inch pies sold are apple. But when supermarket started selling smaller, single-serving pies, apple fell to fourth or fifth place! Turns out, apple is everybody’s second favorite flavor, and when you have to buy one big pie for your whole family, you go with the flavor that pleases everyone, even if it’s not each family member’s personal favorite. With bigger and more data, we have more insight into our world.

Like Cukier says: “More data doesn't just let us see more, more of the same thing we were looking at. More data allows us to see new. It allows us to see better. It allows us to see different. In this case, it allows us to see what America's favorite pie is: not apple.”

Cukier then talks about how big data will change our world by transforming how we live, how we work, and how we think, but I personally enjoy the fun ways we can use it, like figuring out the popularity of pie flavors. For example, big data has changed the way I watch and enjoy sports. There are so many statistics now available to anyone who has access to the internet, like a football player’s yards per carry or the average yards per carry for the entire NFL. We can even use football statistics to compute the probability of any particular throw being completed! Now when I watch a football game, I can appreciate so many more aspects to it than just rooting for one team to win.