Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data [Book Review]
By: Kristin Hunter-Thomson
I don’t know about you, but I remember taking my statistics courses and I remember the names of many (albeit not all) of the different statistical tests…but if you were to ask me on any given day to point to something in the world and tell you what statistical analysis I should do to answer a question about it I would seriously start to shake. I mean the knowledge has to be up there somewhere, right? But I always feel like I need a refresher before I can use it again (which I know means I should practice and use it more…but life is what it is :)).
If you can relate to my experience…
If you are looking for a statistical refresher on different statistical analyses…
If you want a fun way to explore the myriad of ways that statistics influence our daily lives…
Then check out Charles Wheelan’s Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data. It is a wonderfully accessible exploration of statistics as it relates to our lives. But it also packs a punch as a good reminder of why and when we use different statistical analyses. All of the information is organized around relevant, current ways in which statistical questions/approaches infuse into our daily lives:
-
Descriptive Statistics: Who was the best baseball player of all time?
-
Deceptive Descriptions: He’s got a great personality!
-
Correlation: How does Netflix know what movies I like?
-
Basic Probability: Don’t buy the extended warranty on your $99 printer
-
Problems with Probability: How overconfident math geeks nearly destroyed the global financial system
-
The Central Limit Theorem: The Lebron James of statistics
-
Inference: Why my statistics professor thought I might have cheated
-
Polling: How we know that 64 percent of Americans support the death penalty (with a sampling error +/- 3 percent)
-
Regression Analysis: The miracle elixir
-
Common Regression Mistakes: The mandatory warning label
-
Program Evaluation: Will going to Harvard change your life?
If you are looking for a fun way to refresh yourself with statistics, consider adding this to your reading queue going forward. If you do, make sure to reach out with any comments, insights, or fun anecdotes.
