The Numbers Game
The Strunk White of statistics team up to help the average person navigate the numbers in the news Drawing on their hugely popular BBC Radio 4 show More or Less,, journalist Michael Blastland and internationally known economist Andrew Dilnot delight, amuse, and convert American mathphobes by showing how our everyday experiences make sense of numbers The radical premise of The Numbers Game is to show how much we already know, and give practical ways to use our knowledge to become cannier consumers of the media In each concise chapter, the authors take on a different theme such as size, chance, averages, targets, risk, measurement, and data and present it as a memorable and entertaining story If you ve ever wondered what average really means, whether the scare stories about cancer risk should convince you to change your behavior, or whether a story you read in the paper is biased and how , you need this book Blastland and Dilnot show how to survive and thrive on the torrent of numbers that pours through everyday life It s the essential guide to every cause you love or hate, and every issue you follow, in the language everyone uses. Free Download The Numbers Game By Michael Blastland For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr I don t think I ll ever need to refer to this book again otherwise I would keep it so I ve donated the book It s a very good read, however, especially for readers who are not too conversant with math, and occasionally ask themselves what does that thing in the news about statistics or probability or the ways that the government is rating teachers etc etc etc really mean Is it real, or is it a charade original review This was a real good read, muchrewarding than I would have thought I don t think I ll ever need to refer to this book again otherwise...I m looking forward to reading this book The way the media, and even people who should know better, abuse numbers so as to make real risk assessment very difficult is discouraging For example, the American Institute of Cancer Research says we should eliminate eating bacon because doing so increases our risk of colorectal cancer by 21% That is true on the face of it and would appear startling until you ask what the baseline is About 45 of 1000 men will get that cancer, or about 5 per 100 men I m looking forward to reading this book The way the media, and even people who should know better, abuse numbers so as to make real risk assessment very difficult is discouraging For example, the American Institute of Cancer Research says we should eliminate eating bacon because doing so increases our risk of colorectal cancer by 21% That is true on the face of it and would appear startling until you ask what the baseline is About 45 of 1000 men will get that cancer, or about 5 per 100 men If every one of those 100 men ate bacon every day, 6 men would get the cancer, an increase of about 20%, yet actual risk all other risk factors aside remains really quite low at 5% This is an example I m not sure of the exact numbers The principle is the same.I was frosted recently by t...Good A decent source of introduction on how numbers could be used to mislead people.Bad The authors made some ridiculous guesses even in a field that they don t know anything about, e.g they claimed that Homo Florensis were probably normal human, who were diseased and lacking nutrition, instea...I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads It s still an honest review, but the FTC wanted you to know The Numbers Game is a great guide to how to understand numbers and how they are used, especially in politics and the news Blastland and Dilnot use daily life examples to illustrate statistical principles in a way that is easy to read and even entertaining.Some of my favorite examples include describing how a statistical trend is similar to a man walking his I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads It s still an honest review, but the FTC wanted you to know The Numbers Game is a great guide to how to understand numbers and how they are used, especially in politics and the news Blastland and Dilnot use daily life examples to illustrate statistical principles in a way that is easy to read and even entertaining.Some of my favorite examples include describing how a statistical trend is similar to a man walking his dog on a retractable leash up or down a hill small up and down movements of the dog don t always indicate the direction that the man is walking , comparing the poem of the six blind men d...The Numbers Game is a fascinating look at statistics and polls The take home message is that you can t believe everything you read, especially polls, but if you understand how polls are done how things are counted you may be better able to cut through the crap The book contains some truths which are surprising, but probably shouldn t be For instance, when the government or some organization reports that there are so many of this or that in the country, be it illegal aliens or dogs and cats, The Numbers Ga...The Numbers Game The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, in Life by Michael Blastland and Andrew Bilmont pp 210 A must read book on interpreting numbers presented in our daily headlines by the British men behind the TV program, More or Less Blastland and Bilmont do a fantastic job of speaking in plain, non math speak and presenting interesting examples of how stats are often blown out of proportion in our 30 second sound bit culture Highly accessible and eas The Numbers Game The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, in Life by Michael Blastland and Andrew Bilmont pp 210 A must read book on interpreting numbers presented in our daily headlines by the British men behind the TV program, More or Less Blastland and Bilmont do a fantastic job of speaking in plain, non math speak and presenting interesting examples of how stats are often blown out of proportion in our 30 second sound bit culture Highly accessible and easy to read.Admirably, they are not making any political points in the examples they present They also do a nice job of equating some of their UK cases in terms of the US ...Good book about the kind of numbers and statistics you see in the news, and how to interpret them properly For example, if you hear something like eating a carrot a day doubles your chance of getting liver cancer that sounds significant But it could mean that carrots double your chance of cancer from 1 2% to 1%, and news reports rarely specify Also, it s important to know the accuracy of any medical tests you take If you have a positive mammogram you still only have about a 10% chance of h Good book abo...This book is based on a popular British show called More or Less in which a writer and an economist try to teach the general public to make sense of the data that swamp us each day For me, the most valuable part of the book involves the numerous examples of how data have been presented by journalists and politicians to support particular viewpoints The specific topics covered include making sense of averages, the over use of performance measures, assessing risk, making sense of sampling, unde This book is based on a popular British show called More or Less i...This is a really cool book that interprets common statistical and information gathering misunderstandings in a way that everyone can understand Maybe that doesn t make it sound interesting, but trust me, it is.This book will explain why if you get a positive result on a test that s 90% accurate, it doesn t mean you have a 90% chance of having that disease It explains how and why people game the systems put into place to measure comparisons It explains why two people can measure the same issue This is a really cool book that interprets common statistical and information gathering misunderstandings in a way that everyone can understand Maybe that doesn t make it sound interesting, but trust me, it is.This ...If you ve ever been confused or frustrated by statistics, polls, and other numbers you ve read about or heard on tv, this book should be on your shelf Blastland, a journalist, and Andrew Dilnot, a fiscal math expert, explain in simple terms and with interesting and sometimes amusing examples how statistics and other numbers can be manipulated to mean just about anything the creator wants The authors discuss polls, percentages, graphs and charts, census numbers, mortality and health stats, budg If you ve ever been confused or frustrated by statistics, polls, and other numbers you ve read about or heard on tv, thi...
- English
- 27 December 2017 Michael Blastland
- Hardcover
- 210 pages
- 1592404235
- Michael Blastland
- The Numbers Game