Jesteś pewien, że widziany przez ciebie rekin to nie jakaś mała rybka? I że opowieść o bocianach przynoszących dzieci to fikcja? Czy wiesz, że dzięki umiejętnemu wykorzystaniu liczb możesz dowieść zdrady swojej żony? Albo wmówić palaczowi, że to nie palenie papierosów powoduje raka płuc?Statystyka pozwala tworzyć mity i je obalać.Dzięki tej książce przekonasz się, że właściwe zrozumienie liczb pozwala zobaczyć, jaki świat jest naprawdę. Tim Harford przeprowadzi cię przez gąszcz dezinformacji, pseudonaukowej ściemy i pokrętnej logiki i sprawi, że zaprzyjaźnisz się z liczbami. Pokaże ci również, jak korzystając z dziesięciu prostych zasad statystycznych oraz jednej złotej reguły, ogarnąć świat, odróżnić fakty od wyobrażeń i nie dać się zrobić w balona.Harford jest geniuszem w opowiadaniu historii, które pomagają zrozumieć świat.Malcolm GladwellKsiążka mocna, przekonująca i... niezbędna.Caroline Criado Perez
'If you aren't in love with stats before reading this book, you will be by the time you're done. Powerful, persuasive, and in these truth-defying times, indispensable' - Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women
'Nobody makes the statistics of everyday life more fascinating and enjoyable than Tim Harford' - Bill Bryson
'Fabulously readable, lucid, witty and authoritative . . . Every politician and journalist should be made to read this book, but everyone else will get so much pleasure and draw so much strength from the joyful way it dispels the clouds of deceit and delusion' - Stephen Fry
'Wise, humane and, above all, illuminating. Nobody is better on statistics and numbers - and how to make sense of them' - Matthew Syed
THE SUNDAY TIMES BUSINESS BESTSELLER
When was the last time you read a grand statement, accompanied by a large number, and wondered whether it could really be true? Statistics are vital in helping us tell stories - we see them in the papers, on social media, and we hear them used in everyday conversation - and yet we doubt them more than ever.
But numbers - in the right hands - have the power to change the world for the better. Contrary to popular belief, good statistics are not a trick, although they are a kind of magic. Good statistics are not smoke and mirrors; in fact, they help us see more clearly. Good statistics are like a telescope for an astronomer, a microscope for a bacteriologist, or an X-ray for a radiologist. If we are willing to let them, good statistics help us see things about the world around us and about ourselves - both large and small - that we would not be able to see in any other way.
In How to Make the World Add Up, Tim Harford draws on his experience as both an economist and presenter of the BBC's radio show 'More or Less'. He takes 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 worthwhile. Harford's characters range from the art forger who conned the Nazis to the stripper who fell in love with the most powerful congressman in Washington, to famous data detectives such as John Maynard Keynes, Daniel Kahneman and Florence Nightingale. He reveals how we can evaluate the claims that surround us with confidence, curiosity and a healthy level of scepticism.
Using ten simple rules for understanding numbers - plus one golden rule - this extraordinarily insightful book shows how if we keep our wits about us, thinking carefully about the way numbers are sourced and presented, we can look around us and see with crystal clarity how the world adds up.
The urge to tidiness seems to be rooted deep in the human psyche. Many of us feel threatened by anything that is vague, unplanned, scattered around or hard to describe. We find comfort in having a script to rely on, a system to follow, in being able to categorise and file away.
We all benefit from tidy organisation - up to a point. A large library needs a reference system. Global trade needs the shipping container. Scientific collaboration needs measurement units. But the forces of tidiness have marched too far. Corporate middle managers and government bureaucrats have long tended to insist that everything must have a label, a number and a logical place in a logical system. Now that they are armed with computers and serial numbers, there is little to hold this tidy-mindedness in check. It's even spilling into our personal lives, as we corral our children into sanitised play areas or entrust our quest for love to the soulless algorithms of dating websites. Order is imposed when chaos would be more productive. Or if not chaos, then . . . messiness.
The trouble with tidiness is that, in excess, it becomes rigid, fragile and sterile. In Messy, Tim Harford reveals how qualities we value more than ever - responsiveness, resilience and creativity - simply cannot be disentangled from the messy soil that produces them.
This, then, is a book about the benefits of being messy: messy in our private lives; messy in the office, with piles of paper on the desk and unread spreadsheets; messy in the recording studio, the laboratory or in preparing for an important presentation; and messy in our approach to business, politics and economics, leaving things vague, diverse and uncomfortably made-up-on-the-spot. It's time to rediscover the benefits of a little mess.
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