Understanding Statistics

Making Numbers Count, argues that it's crucial for us all to be able to interpret and communicate numbers and stats more effectively so that data comes alive. By combining years of research into making ideas stick with a deep understanding of how the brain really works, Heath has discerned six critical principles that will give anyone the tools to communicate numbers with more transparency and meaning.

Communication is a critical yet often overlooked part of data science. Communicating with Data aims to help students and researchers write about their insights in a way that is both compelling and faithful to the data. General advice on science writing is also provided, including how to distill findings into a story and organize and revise the story, and how to write clearly, concisely, and precisely.

In How to Make the World Add Up: Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers, Tim Harford draws on his experience as both an economist and presenter of the BBC's radio show 'More or Less' to take us deep into the world of disinformation and obfuscation, bad research and misplaced motivation to find those priceless jewels of data and analysis that make communicating with numbers so rewarding.

Calling Bullsh*t offers readers the tools to see through the obfuscations, deliberate and careless, that dominate every realm of our lives. In this lively guide Bergstrom, a computational biologist, and West, a statistician, teach us that calling bullshit is crucial to a properly functioning social group, whether it be a circle of friends, a community of academics, or the citizenry of a nation.

Early in her extraordinary career, Deborah Stone wrote Policy Paradox, a landmark work on politics. Now, in Counting: How We Use Numbers to Decide What Matters, she revolutionizes how we approach numbers and shows how counting shapes the way we see the world. Most of us think of counting as a skill so basic that we see numbers as objective, indisputable facts.

Bad Data: Why We Measure The Wrong Things and Often Miss The Metrics That Matter highlights the pitfalls of data analysis and emphasizes the importance of using the appropriate metrics before making key decisions. Big data is often touted as the key to understanding almost every aspect of contemporary life. This critique of shows that even more important than data is finding the right metrics to evaluate it.

In The Art of Statistics, David Spiegelhalter guides the reader through the essential principles we need in order to derive knowledge from data. Drawing on real world problems to introduce conceptual issues, he shows us how statistics can help us determine the luckiest passenger on the Titanic, whether serial killer Harold Shipman could have been caught earlier, and if screening for ovarian cancer is beneficial. Spiegelhalter reveals the answers to questions that can only be addressed using statistical science.

From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, and the media. Invisible Women reveals how in a world built for and by men we are systematically ignoring half of the population, often with disastrous consequences. Caroline Criado Perez brings together for the first time an impressive range of case studies, stories and new research from across the world that illustrate the hidden ways in which women are forgotten, and the profound impact this has on us all.

The main message of Health and Lifestyle: Separating the Truth from the Myth is that people should be on their guard against both scare stories about risks to health, and claims for miracle cures of medical conditions. In the 21st century hardly a day passes without another article appearing in the media about a new treatment for a particular disease, new ways of improving our health by changing our lifestyle or new foodstuffs that claim to increase (or decrease) the risk of heart disease, cancer and the like.