Blog: William McKnight

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Jeffrey Ma, "21"

Jeffrey Ma was the keynote speaker at the MDM Summit Sunday night in San Francisco. He is the subject of the (current top box office) movie "21" about the MIT Blackjack team that took their system to Vegas on weekends. The system gave them, at most, a 2% advantage over the house. When deployed over time, that is sure to be most profitable. I saw the movie and I really enjoyed it.

One thing you'll notice, if you saw the movie, is that Mr. Ma does not look like the actor who portrayed him in the movie, who is Caucasian.

Aaron Zornes, Chief Research Officer for the MDM Institute, kicked off the session by rightfully announcing that CDI (customer data integration) was important in bringing the MIT team down.

The team's success at blackjack came from the same places where our success in other business comes from: trust and teamwork, planning and organization, common goal setting and commitment to analytics.

Jeffrey's main message was not to let emotion guide your decisions. He mentioned that Jerry West, longtime NBA luminary as a player, coach and executive, "hated statistics" because the common ones do not take enough information into account to really be useful. Jeffrey can work on this in his current venture - Protrade, a sports stock market website.

Technorati tags: Jeffrey MA, 21

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