Stat-Spotting

2013-09-14
Stat-Spotting

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  • Author: Joel Best
  • Publisher: Univ of California Press
  • ISBN: 0520957075
  • Category : Social Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 161

Does a young person commit suicide every thirteen minutes in the United States? Are four million women really battered to death by their husbands or boyfriends each year? Is methamphetamine our number one drug problem today? Alarming statistics bombard our daily lives, appearing in the news, on the Web, seemingly everywhere. But all too often, even the most respected publications present numbers that are miscalculated, misinterpreted, hyped, or simply misleading. This new edition contains revised benchmark statistics, updated resources, and a new section on the rhetorical uses of statistics, complete with new problems to be spotted and new examples illustrating those problems. Joel Best’s best seller exposes questionable uses of statistics and guides the reader toward becoming a more critical, savvy consumer of news, information, and data. Entertaining, informative, and concise, Stat-Spotting takes a commonsense approach to understanding data and doesn't require advanced math or statistics.

Stat-Spotting

2013-09-14
Stat-Spotting

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  • Author: Joel Best
  • Publisher: Univ of California Press
  • ISBN: 0520279980
  • Category : Political Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 160

This edition updates benchmarks, includes a new chapter on rhetoric, updated a few examples, and thoroughly updated the bibliography.

Damned Lies and Statistics

2012-08-07
Damned Lies and Statistics

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  • Author: Joel Best
  • Publisher: Univ of California Press
  • ISBN: 0520953517
  • Category : Social Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 218

Here, by popular demand, is the updated edition to Joel Best's classic guide to understanding how numbers can confuse us. In his new afterword, Best uses examples from recent policy debates to reflect on the challenges to improving statistical literacy. Since its publication ten years ago, Damned Lies and Statistics has emerged as the go-to handbook for spotting bad statistics and learning to think critically about these influential numbers.

More Damned Lies and Statistics

2004-09-06
More Damned Lies and Statistics

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  • Author: Joel Best
  • Publisher: Univ of California Press
  • ISBN: 0520930029
  • Category : Social Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 222

In this sequel to the acclaimed Damned Lies and Statistics, which the Boston Globe said "deserves a place next to the dictionary on every school, media, and home-office desk," Joel Best continues his straightforward, lively, and humorous account of how statistics are produced, used, and misused by everyone from researchers to journalists. Underlining the importance of critical thinking in all matters numerical, Best illustrates his points with examples of good and bad statistics about such contemporary concerns as school shootings, fatal hospital errors, bullying, teen suicides, deaths at the World Trade Center, college ratings, the risks of divorce, racial profiling, and fatalities caused by falling coconuts. More Damned Lies and Statistics encourages all of us to think in a more sophisticated and skeptical manner about how statistics are used to promote causes, create fear, and advance particular points of view. Best identifies different sorts of numbers that shape how we think about public issues: missing numbers are relevant but overlooked; confusing numbers bewilder when they should inform; scary numbers play to our fears about the present and the future; authoritative numbers demand respect they don’t deserve; magical numbers promise unrealistic, simple solutions to complex problems; and contentious numbers become the focus of data duels and stat wars. The author's use of pertinent, socially important examples documents the life-altering consequences of understanding or misunderstanding statistical information. He demystifies statistical measures by explaining in straightforward prose how decisions are made about what to count and what not to count, what assumptions get made, and which figures are brought to our attention. Best identifies different sorts of numbers that shape how we think about public issues. Entertaining, enlightening, and very timely, this book offers a basis for critical thinking about the numbers we encounter and a reminder that when it comes to the news, people count—in more ways than one.

Statistics Behind the Headlines

2022-09-28
Statistics Behind the Headlines

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  • Author: A. John Bailer
  • Publisher: CRC Press
  • ISBN: 1000700615
  • Category : Mathematics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 204

How do you learn about what’s going on in the world? Did a news headline grab your attention? Did a news story report on recent research? What do you need to know to be a critical consumer of the news you read? If you are looking to start developing your data self-defense and critical news consumption skills, this book is for you! It reflects a long-term collaboration between a statistician and a journalist to shed light on the statistics behind the stories and the stories behind the statistics. The only prerequisite for enjoying this book is an interest in developing the skills and insights for better understanding news stories that incorporate quantitative information. Chapters in Statistics Behind the Headlines kick off with a news story headline and a summary of the story itself. The meat of each chapter consists of an exploration of the statistical and journalism concepts needed to understand the data analyzed and reported in the story. The chapters are organized around these sections: What ideas will you encounter in this chapter? What is claimed? Is it appropriate? Who is claiming this? Why is it claimed? What makes this a story worth telling? Is this a good measure of impact? How is the claim supported? What evidence is reported? What is the quality/strength of the evidence? Does the claim seem reasonable? How does this claim fit with what is already known? How much does this matter? Considering the coverage Chapters close with connections to the Stats + Stories podcast.

Everyone's a Winner

2011-03-07
Everyone's a Winner

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  • Author: Joel Best
  • Publisher: Univ of California Press
  • ISBN: 0520267168
  • Category : Art
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 212

Looks at the increasing abundance of status in our society and considers its effects, including the tendency to split into ever more specific groups to enhance status.

Liespotting

2010-07-20
Liespotting

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  • Author: Pamela Meyer
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press
  • ISBN: 1429988533
  • Category : Self-Help
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 255

Liespotting shows how to use the latest techniques to spot deception in work and life situations. GET TO THE TRUTH People--friends, family members, work colleagues, salespeople--lie to us all the time. Daily, hourly, constantly. None of us is immune, and all of us are victims. According to studies by several different researchers, most of us encounter nearly 200 lies a day. Now there's something we can do about it. Pamela Meyer's Liespotting links three disciplines--facial recognition training, interrogation training, and a comprehensive survey of research in the field--into a specialized body of information developed specifically to help business leaders detect deception and get the information they need to successfully conduct their most important interactions and transactions. Some of the nation's leading business executives have learned to use these methods to root out lies in high stakes situations. Liespotting for the first time brings years of knowledge--previously found only in the intelligence community, police training academies, and universities--into the corporate boardroom, the manager's meeting, the job interview, the legal proceeding, and the deal negotiation. WHAT'S IN THE BOOK? Learn communication secrets previously known only to a handful of scientists, interrogators and intelligence specialists. Liespotting reveals what's hiding in plain sight in every business meeting, job interview and negotiation: - The single most dangerous facial expression to watch out for in business & personal relationships - 10 questions that get people to tell you anything - A simple 5-step method for spotting and stopping the lies told in nearly every high-stakes business negotiation and interview - Dozens of postures and facial expressions that should instantly put you on Red Alert for deception - The telltale phrases and verbal responses that separate truthful stories from deceitful ones - How to create a circle of advisers who will guarantee your success

Know Your Chances

2008-11-30
Know Your Chances

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  • Author: Steven Woloshin
  • Publisher: Univ of California Press
  • ISBN: 0520252225
  • Category : Family & Relationships
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 154

Understanding risk -- Putting risk in perspective -- Risk charts : a way to get perspective -- Judging the benefit of a health intervention -- Not all benefits are equal : understand the outcome -- Consider the downsides -- Do the benefits outweight the downsides? -- Beware of exaggerated importance -- Beware of exaggerated certainty -- Who's behind the numbers?

A Panorama of Statistics

2017-01-30
A Panorama of Statistics

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  • Author: Eric Sowey
  • Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
  • ISBN: 1119075823
  • Category : Mathematics
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 338

Dieses Buch nimmt den Leser mit auf eine anregende Reise rund um die Welt der Statistik. Auf eine ganz andere Art werden Theorie und Praxis Dozenten, Studenten und Praktikern nahe gebracht. Auf jeder Etappe dieser Reise untersuchen die Autoren ungewöhnliche und skurille Aspekte der Statistik, stellen historische, biographische und philosophische Dimensionen heraus. Die einzelnen Kapitel beginnen mit einem Ausblick auf das Thema, oftmals aus unterschiedlichen Blickwinkeln. Darauf folgen fünf Fragen, die zum Nachdenken anregen. Ziel ist es, die Kenntnisse der Leser zu erweitern und zu vertiefen. Zu den Fragen gibt es auch immer wieder unterhaltsame Rätsel, mit denen spannende Paradoxa aufgelöst werden. Die Leser können ihre eigenen Entdeckungen in der Welt der Statistik mit den ausführlichen Antworten der Autoren auf die jeweiligen Fragen vergleichen.

Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts

2011-05-15
Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts

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  • Author: Peter Andreas
  • Publisher: Cornell University Press
  • ISBN: 0801457068
  • Category : Social Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 299

At least 200,000-250,000 people died in the war in Bosnia. "There are three million child soldiers in Africa." "More than 650,000 civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S. occupation of Iraq." "Between 600,000 and 800,000 women are trafficked across borders every year." "Money laundering represents as much as 10 percent of global GDP." "Internet child porn is a $20 billion-a-year industry." These are big, attention-grabbing numbers, frequently used in policy debates and media reporting. Peter Andreas and Kelly M. Greenhill see only one problem: these numbers are probably false. Their continued use and abuse reflect a much larger and troubling pattern: policymakers and the media naively or deliberately accept highly politicized and questionable statistical claims about activities that are extremely difficult to measure. As a result, we too often become trapped by these mythical numbers, with perverse and counterproductive consequences. This problem exists in myriad policy realms. But it is particularly pronounced in statistics related to the politically charged realms of global crime and conflict-numbers of people killed in massacres and during genocides, the size of refugee flows, the magnitude of the illicit global trade in drugs and human beings, and so on. In Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and policy analysts critically examine the murky origins of some of these statistics and trace their remarkable proliferation. They also assess the standard metrics used to evaluate policy effectiveness in combating problems such as terrorist financing, sex trafficking, and the drug trade.