Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists
A Economics, Sociology, Mathematics book. The points in this book can be summed up quickly:*...
Does the number of children gunned down double each year? Does anorexia kill 150,000 young women annually? Do white males account for only a sixth of new workers? Startling statistics shape our thinking about social issues. But all too often, these numbers are wrong. This book is a lively guide to spotting bad statistics and learning to think critically about these influential numbers. Damned Lies and Statistics is essential reading for everyone who reads or listens to the news, for students, and for anyone who relies on statistical information to understand social problems.Joel Best bases his discussion on a wide assortment of intriguing contemporary issues that have garnered much recent media attention, including abortion, cyberporn, homelessness, the Million Man March, teen suicide, the U.S....
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- Filetype: PDF
- Pages: 199 pages
- ISBN: 9780520219786 / 520219783
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More About Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists
Pretty basic, a little too long, but obviously an important book. Really interesting to learn about some of the history of statistics - I had no idea that stats themselves, as an idea and a discipline, are rooted in social science. That is, people started collecting stats in order to talk about social/policy issues! Seems very "duh"... How easy it is to be deceived by statistics. The points in this book can be summed up quickly:* Society as a whole is innumerate (with caveats)* Statistics can be misunderstood, misquoted, over- or undergeneralized, and these issues can all be compounded.* All creators of statistics have their own agenda, even if it is that their statistics be unbiased.* When looking at a statistic,...
