Adventures in Statistics: How We Live in a World of Numbers (Copernicus Books)

This book is about how statistics play a role in life, whether in business, psychology, biology, economics, or just about anything short of basket weaving. You cannot make a trip to the doctor, watch a football game, or even go to the grocery store without some statistic staring you down. Your age, weight, and cholesterol make you a high risk for diabetes ... the chance that your team will win the game is 12.5 percent ... 4 out of 5 dentists like this toothpaste. What does it all mean? Adventures in Statistics: How We Live in a World of Numbers tells you what all those numbers mean. But the book does not spit out a bunch of mathematical formulas; the book tells stories. Stories that explain statistics through popular culture, sports, and history. You’re confused about that false positive warning in that drug commercial, the 2007 comedy Juno explains how medical tests – including pregnancy tests – fail and why. Not clear about what your coworkers are talking about when they say, ‘black swans.’ the 1997 blockbuster Titanic makes sense of the concept. Adventures in Statistics: How We Live in a World of Numbers shows how professionals in medicine, business, politics, sports, and many other fields use numbers. So, just about everyone would gain from reading this book, perhaps even basket weavers. Acknowledgments Contents 1: Average You Are Not Average Averages Mislead Averages Confound Average People Innovate Average Is Beautiful 2: Coin Flips Sacred Coin Flips History of Coin Flips Independence and Coin Flips Tragedy and Coin Flips Anxiety and Coin Flips 3: First Principles Detective Work The Normal Distribution Power Laws First Principles 4: Black Swans Black Swans Sand Piles Streaks Cartesian Anxiety Revisited 5: False Positives Kind of Pregnant Kind of Guilty Kind of Confusing Hypothesis Testing 6: Counting Counting Cows Measuring Counting Big Numbers Unrepresentative Samples Coronavirus (Covid-19) 7: Correlation Golden Ticket Spurious Abortion Randomization Smoking and Cancer 8: Juking the Stats Good Luck Goodhart’s Law Multiple Numbers Banners and Banquets Genius Duped 9: Nirvana Fallacy Nirvana Fallacy “Analytics Don’t Work” “The NBA Is About Talent” “He’s One of Those Idiots Who Believes in Analytics” The Hidden Half 10: Statistics Hall of Fame Inaugural Class Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) Ronald A. Fisher (1890–1962) Edward O. Thorp (1932–) Hans Rosling (1948–2017) Bill James (1949–) Statistical Adventures Epilogue: Top Ten Podcast Episodes About Statistics Top Ten Episode Highlights Episode Highlights Episode Highlights Episode Highlights Episode Highlights Episode Highlights Episode Highlights Episode Highlights Episode Highlights Episode Highlights Stories that explain statistics using popular culture, sports, and historyEngaging stories of popular culture providing explanations of statisticsAppealing to anyone who wants to understand how numbers are used