+Resource blog
Standard Deviations: Flawed assumptions, Tortured data and other ways to lie with statistics by Gary Smith
James B.'s Recommendation for the 510 Club | March 2024
Standard Deviations was a gateway into popular maths books for me. I love this book and think others would too. It shows examples of statistics gone wrong! Either unwittingly or by nefarious means. It's an anecdotal book that about misleading data presentation that is a lighthearted read without any formulas. Written in an easy to read, accessible language that this entertaining along the way, this book should appeal to >99% of this distribution.
If you liked Ben Goldacre's Bad Science or Matt Parker's Humble Pi, this is an excellent addition to your next reads.
Published in 2014, the stories and examples in the book remain contemporary and relatable to the modern day. With Big Data more prevalent it's even more relevant to question the fairness of data and the stats.
"Sometimes, the unscrupulous deliberately try to mislead us. Other times, the well-intentioned are blissfully unaware of the mischief they are committing. Today, big data sets are so plentiful that researchers spend precious little time distinguishing between good meaningful deductions and total rubbish"
At the end of each chapter there is a 'Don't be fooled' section, educating us readers into how to spot examples of bad data presentation in the future.
If you don't have time to read the whole thing, I recommend the chapter 'Graphical Gaffs'. It shows how data can be poorly presented with inconsistent axis scales, without an origin, or other ways that a graph can at first glance show the opposite of what is really happening.
WHAT IS THE 510 CLUB?
The 510 Club is named after the Dewey Decimal classification for Mathematics. It is a book recommendation project facilitated by Mathateca that is published in the monthly Christchurch MathsJam newsletter and on the Facebook page. Each month we feature a mathematical book recommendation, whether that’s a novel, articles / essays, a puzzle book, textbook, biography... just as long as it features maths in some way. Read the above book at your leisure then feel free to comment your thoughts below, or come along to the following Christchurch MathsJam sessions to join in an informal maths/book chat with the reviewer.
We're always looking for suggestions! If you're interested in contributing a book rec one month, please email christchurch@mathsjam.com to sign up.
