Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics
Written by Gary Smith
Narrated by Tim Andres Pabon
4.5/5
()
About this audiobook
Did you know that baseball players whose names begin with the letter “D” are more likely to die young? Or that Asian Americans are most susceptible to heart attacks on the fourth day of the month? Or that drinking a full pot of coffee every morning will add years to your life, but one cup a day increases the risk of pancreatic cancer? All of these “facts” have been argued with a straight face by credentialed researchers and backed up with reams of data and convincing statistics.
As Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase once cynically observed, “If you torture data long enough, it will confess.” Lying with statistics is a time-honored con. In Standard Deviations, economics professor Gary Smith walks us through the various tricks and traps that people use to back up their own crackpot theories. Sometimes, the unscrupulous deliberately try to mislead us. Other times, the well-intentioned are blissfully unaware of the mischief they are committing. Today, data is so plentiful that researchers spend precious little time distinguishing between good, meaningful indicators and total rubbish. Not only do others use data to fool us, we fool ourselves.
With the breakout success of Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise, the once humdrum subject of statistics has never been hotter. Drawing on breakthrough research in behavioral economics by luminaries like Daniel Kahneman and Dan Ariely and taking to task some of the conclusions of Freakonomics author Steven D. Levitt, Standard Deviations demystifies the science behind statistics and makes it easy to spot the fraud all around.
Gary Smith
Gary Smith received his B.S. in Mathematics from Harvey Mudd College and his PhD in Economics from Yale University. He was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Yale University for seven years. He is currently the Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics at Pomona College. He has won two teaching awards and has written (or co-authored) seventy-five academic papers, eight college textbooks, and two trade books (most recently, Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie With Statistics, Overlook/Duckworth, 2014). His research has been featured in various media including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Motley Fool, NewsWeek and BusinessWeek. For more information visit www.garysmithn.com.
More audiobooks from Gary Smith
The AI Delusion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What the Luck?: The Surprising Role of Chance in Our Everyday Lives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Distrust: Big Data, Data-Torturing, and the Assault on Science Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMoney Machine: The Surprisingly Simple Power of Value Investing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related to Standard Deviations
Related audiobooks
The Genius Checklist: Nine Paradoxical Tips on How You Can Become a Creative Genius Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Risk Savvy: How to Make Good Decisions Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Chancing It: The Laws of Chance and What They Mean for You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everydata: The Misinformation Hidden in the Little Data You Consume Every Day Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Know This: Today's Most Interesting and Important Scientific Ideas, Discoveries, and Developments Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Black-and-White Thinking: The Burden of a Binary Brain in a Complex World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Math, from One to Infinity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Counting: How We Use Numbers to Decide What Matters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Measurement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Most Elegant Equation: Euler's Formula and the Beauty of Mathematics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fluke: The Math and Myth of Coincidence Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Keeping Up with the Quants: Your Guide to Understanding and Using Analytics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Basics of Statistics Explained Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prime Number Conspiracy: The Biggest Ideas in Math from Quanta Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Probability Theory Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Models of the Mind: How Physics, Engineering and Mathematics Have Shaped Our Understanding of the Brain Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Formula: How Algorithms Solve all our Problems... and Create More Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A History of Pi Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Statistics Crash Course Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter about Visual Information Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Personal Growth For You
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Paris: The Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unfu*k Yourself: Get Out of Your Head and into Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 48 Laws of Power Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Finding Me: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change Your Life, and Achieve Real Happiness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Highly Sensitive Person Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Supernatural: How Common People Are Doing The Uncommon Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Every Day Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Boundaries: When To Say Yes, How to Say No Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Do Hard Things: Why We Get Resilience Wrong and the Surprising Science of Real Toughness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Starts with Self-Compassion: A Practical Road Map Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Mormon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/58 Rules of Love: How to Find It, Keep It, and Let It Go Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Banish Your Inner Critic: Silence the Voice of Self-Doubt to Unleash Your Creativity and Do Your Best Work Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Reviews for Standard Deviations
38 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is a terrific book! A wonderful journey through some of the silliness of statistics and probability, and how to navigate this with good science and commonsense. Lots of tips, tricks and approaches for critical thinking. The author has a really good feel for concepts that are often difficult to grasp. This equips readers with a clear framework for learning more about these important concepts and how to apply them in our everyday lives. It’s a major achievement to make a potentially dry subject engaging, entertaining and interesting. The author’s clear grasp of these areas and their love of learning shines through. Highly recommended!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book was well thought out, flowed well, contained many relevant examples, and was not overly technical. Many times with math books, the writing can be cryptic and authors launch into tangents that nobody understands. Not so with this book. It teaches interesting topics in relevant and straightforward ways. Half a star taken away because one or two of the author's explanations were somewhat confusing, but upon a second reading things became clear. The book has many valuable take-aways.