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  • Standard Deviations

  • Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics
  • By: Gary Smith
  • Narrated by: Tim Andres Pabon
  • Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (18 ratings)

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Standard Deviations

By: Gary Smith
Narrated by: Tim Andres Pabon
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Publisher's Summary

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.

©2015 Gary Smith (P)2016 Gildan Media LLC

Critic Reviews

"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)

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Bitchy and brilliant

Wow, I’m sure the author annoyed a few people with the critique in this book.

I really enjoyed this book, far more than I expected to enjoy a book about statistics.

Lots of examples to illustrate each point - some descriptions seemed longer than they needed to be, but made for a great ‘mini story’.
The narration was done very well to match the writing style.

There is an excellent summary chapter at the end to remind and reinforce all points.

Recommended for anyone working in data collection, analysis, visualisation (although this section is short), or relying on others data to guide big decisions.

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How could I?

This program is not bad pig not bad! But if you know what is good for you, you will read this book while eating bacon.

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