I’m giving these books away

Now that I’m writing about history instead of selling software, I no longer need my forecasting, planning and data management book collection. In hopes that someone will put the best books in my library to continued good use, I’m giving them away.

To enter this sweepstakes, just enter your name and email address below and be sure to click the “Enter” button.

One person, picked at random at 3:00 P.M. EDT on Thursday, June 25, 2020, will receive the 8 gently used books shown here and described below. The winner will be notified directly.

To be perfectly transparent, when you enter this sweepstakes, you will also be added to the list for periodic (about once-a-month) email updates about my book. (You can learn more about that book on this site). Don’t worry - you can delete your name with a single click at any time. Your information will never be shared.

What you will win:

The Checklist Manifest: How to Get Things Right - by Atul Gawande

OK, this is not even remotely a forecasting book. But a surprisingly simple checklist can make a remarkable impact on the efficiency and consistency of any process – such as forecasting, for example. This book is packed with fascinating examples of the tangible benefits of checklists. In my recent past life, I applied the ideas in this book to create checklists of procedures to review forecast accuracy and to manage data for Sales & Operations Planning.

The Wisdom of Crowds - by James Surowiecki

“James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant – better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.” Now that recent sales history has lost most of its predictive value, there has never been a more important time to enact a process to gather and share the meaningful insights of your sales, marketing, supply chain and procurement teams.

The Black Swan - by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“A black swan is a highly improbable event with 3 principal characteristics: it is unpredictable, it carries a massive impact, and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable.”  Does any of this ring a recent bell?

Supply Chain Metrics That Matter - by Lora Cecere

“The effective supply chain makes a difference in winning a war, saving a patient and driving commerce.” As far as I’m concerned, Lora Cecere - a prolific writer and podcaster with unbounded curiosity and a drive to quantify and learn - is the top voice in the supply chain world. In this book, Lora applies a fictionalized narrative to concisely make that case for the significant supply chain metrics that matter and those that don’t.

Information Anxiety 2 - by Richard Saul Wurman

Do you know who created the TED conference? Richard Saul Wurman. He is an information architect (he coined the term) and a graphic designer with an incredible talent for bringing clarity to confusion. This is a rambling and rollicking book that you can get joyfully lost in for hours as you gather textual and visual ideas for making sense of - and sharing - big data.

Beyond Numeracy: Ruminations of A Numbers Man - by John Allen Paulos

This is a book about math that was written in alphabetic sequence. More important, it was written with clarity and wit. Dr. Paulos’ writing is so precise and clear that even a dimwit like me was able to grasp his lessons on chaos theory, fractals, Turing’s test, and so much more. If you enjoy working with numbers, and would like a better understanding of what those numbers mean and how you can put them to better use, you will love this book.

The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail, but Some Don’t - by Nate Silver

This is not your father’s – or your professor’s – forecasting book. If you happen to know me, you are probably already tired of hearing about “Signal …” “Silver visits the most successful forecasters in a range of areas, from hurricanes to baseball to global pandemics, from the poker table to the stock market, from Capitol Hill to the NBA…. Silver observes that the most accurate forecasters tend to have a superior command of probability, and they tend to be both humble and hardworking. They distinguish the predictable from the unpredictable, and they notice a thousand little details that lead them closer to the truth.”

Superforecasting - by Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner

“Superforecasting offers the first demonstrably effective way to improve our ability to predict the future – whether in business, finance, politics, international affairs or daily life – and is destined to become a modern classic.” Even though this book is highly regarded, I still think it is a vastly underrated source of insight into how anyone can improve their ability to forecast. This book is also beautifully written; the authors pay as much attention to their words as they do to the numbers.

If you have questions about this sweepstakes or any of the books, feel free to contact me directly at bill.whiteside@perfectlytruestory.com