Statistical: Ten Easy Ways to Avoid Being Misled By Numbers

(Paperback)

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Description

'Refreshingly clear and engaging' Tim Harford

'Delightful . . . full of unique insights' Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter

There's no getting away from statistics. We encounter them every day. We are all users of statistics whether we like it or not.

Do missed appointments really cost the NHS 1bn per year

What's the difference between the mean gender pay gap and the median gender pay gap

How can we work out if a claim that we use 42 billion single-use plastic straws per year in the UK is accurate

What did the Vote Leave campaign's 350m bus really mean

How can we tell if the headline 'Public pensions cost you 4,000 a year' is correct

Does snow really cost the UK economy 1bn per day

But how do we distinguish statistical fact from fiction What can we do to decide whether a number, claim or news story is accurate Without an understanding of data, we cannot truly understand what is going on in the world around us.

Written by Anthony Reuben, the BBC's first head of statistics, Statistical is an accessible and empowering guide to challenging the numbers all around us.

Reviews

Fascinating . . . timely . . . a lovely humorous undercurrent to it all -- Marcus Berkmann * Daily Mail *
A refreshingly clear and engaging guide to the statistical claims all around us * Tim Harford, author of Fifty Things That Made The Modern Economy & Presenter of BBC More or Less *
Having spent his journalistic career working in a newsroom, being inundated with press releases full with dodgy statistics, Reuben has learned all the ways in which numbers can tell a misleading story. In this delightful book, full of unique insights from personal experience, he warns us of the phrases to look out for, and all the questions to ask about shabby surveys and dubious economic forecasts - there's also a great chapter on how to interpret big numbers. And he advises that we all ask the big question - is this number reasonably likely to be true * Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter *
Statistics can clarify or confuse. That's why you need to read this book * John Humphrys *

Author Bio

Anthony Reuben was the BBC's first Head of Statistics and now works on the corporation's fact-checking Reality Check brand, which he helped create. Anthony has 23 years' experience in journalism, and has been read by millions of readers of the BBC News website over the past 12 years. He has twice won the Royal Statistical Society's award for excellence in journalism and been shortlisted twice for the British Journalism Awards.