Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics
Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics
Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics
Audiobook9 hours

Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics

Written by Gary Smith

Narrated by Tim Andres Pabon

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

()

About this audiobook

“A very entertaining book about a very serious problem. We deceive ourselves all the time with statistics, and it is time we wised up.” -Robert J. Shiller, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics

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.
LanguageEnglish
PublisherAscent Audio
Release dateJun 1, 2016
ISBN9781469034461
Author

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

Related to Standard Deviations

Related audiobooks

Personal Growth For You

View More

Related articles

Reviews for Standard Deviations

Rating: 4.315789473684211 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

38 ratings2 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This 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 stars
    5/5
    This 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.