About the book, from the publisher:
From “one of the great (greatest?) contemporary popular writers on economics” (Tyler Cowen) comes a smart, lively, and encouraging rethinking of how to use statistics.Learn more about the book and author at Tim Harford's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.
Today we think statistics are the enemy, numbers used to mislead and confuse us. That’s a mistake, Tim Harford says in The Data Detective. We shouldn’t be suspicious of statistics—we need to understand what they mean and how they can improve our lives: they are, at heart, human behavior seen through the prism of numbers and are often “the only way of grasping much of what is going on around us.” If we can toss aside our fears and learn to approach them clearly—understanding how our own preconceptions lead us astray—statistics can point to ways we can live better and work smarter.
As “perhaps the best popular economics writer in the world” (New Statesman), Tim Harford is an expert at taking complicated ideas and untangling them for millions of readers. In The Data Detective, he uses new research in science and psychology to set out ten strategies for using statistics to erase our biases and replace them with new ideas that use virtues like patience, curiosity, and good sense to better understand ourselves and the world. As a result, The Data Detective is a big-idea book about statistics and human behavior that is fresh, unexpected, and insightful.
Tim Harford: top 10 undercover economics books.
The Page 69 Test: The Undercover Economist.
The Page 69 Test:The Logic of Life.
The Page 99 Test: Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure.
The Page 99 Test: The Undercover Economist Strikes Back.
Writers Read: Tim Harford (February 2014).
The Page 99 Test: The Data Detective.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
