Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers
- Pages
- 208
- Author
- Chip Heath, Karla Starr
- Published
- 2022
- Date
- Tags
- statistics, writing
There are item(s) tagged with “statistics” on this site.
Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers
“ A study examined the paths created by consistently following the first link in a Wikipedia article. Ninety-five percent (95%) of them eventually led to the page on Philosophy. ”
Unpacking claims that higher education leads to more liberal political viewpoints
“ Higher education does lead to more liberal political viewpoints, but the gap isn’t as large as many claim it to be. ”
Was Harvey Weinstein thanked more often than God at the Oscars?
“ Statistics from analyzing the content of 2,000 Oscar acceptance speeches. ”
“ Employers who took the effort to find and install an alternative web browser performed better on every metric and stayed in jobs longer. ”
Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud
“ A researcher found that many records of people living over 100 years were concentrated in places that had no birth records and high rates of pension fraud. ”
Half of Marriages End in Divorce?
“ It’s a lot harder than you think to calculate how many marriages end in divorce. ”
Height and Dating
“ This news report from 2009 is an experiment that proves short men have significant challenges romantically compared to taller men. ”
“Thomas Bayes was a 17th century English polymath. He documented a method for statistical analysis and probability which has become core to those disciplines. In its simplest form, Bayes Theorem allows us to find the probability of an event occurring them we know the probability of multiple related…”
“This a model of probability and statistics where multiple exclusive options are available, pursued, each one having an individual probability of success. The player must decide if they should continue using a single option, or switch to a new option in the hopes of getting a better output. The name…”
WTF Happened in 1971?
“ Many charts seem to show that something dramatic happened to the U.S. economy in 1971. No answers are provided. ”
Visualizing the World’s Plummeting Fertility Rate
“ Humans are not generating enough replacements to maintain the world’s current population. ”
Days Since Incident
“ This site lists the days since something bad happened, from an earthquake of any kind (zero, because one happens every day) to things like a ‘Teraton Asteroid Impact’ (last happened 35 million years ago), and everything in between (example: someone last lost a nuclear weapon in 1989). ”
“ The act of preparing for or mitigating a disaster or pandemic sometimes reduces the effects to the point where we’re convinced the threat never existed or that we overreacted. ”
99% of the World’s Population Gets Sunlight at the Same Moment on July 8
“ The title gets fact-checked, but is mostly true: the vast majority of the population of the world will experience sunlight at the same time during a 1-minute period every July 8. ”
The Tyranny of Metrics
“An excellent look at how metrics can be used poorly to justify bad policies. Either we measure the wrong thing, measure it the wrong way, or – more often than not – game the measurement system so that we look better than we are. Want it to look like your city’s crime rate is going down? Stop taking…”
What’s Going On With All These Faked Speed Records?
“ A car company claimed to have driven their car at 331 mph. But some viewers proved they didn’t, using nothing a stopwatch and Google Maps. ”
The World Record That Will Stand Forever
“ The men’s javelin throw record is fully 25-years-old, and might be the hardest record to beat. ”
Why 50% of Canadians Live South of This Line
“ Most Canadians live south of the northern border of the United States. The Canadian population is wildly undistributed. ”
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
“Hans Rosling is a legend in statistics and health research. He died a few years ago, but his YouTube videos and TED talks live on. He studied health and living trends around the world, and created a unique way to visualize them. His talks usually involve him pointing at bubbles which move around a…”
“ A record temperature that stood for 90 years was probably just human error. ”
Boston biotech conference led to 245,000 Covid-19 cases across US, genetic fingerprinting shows
“ Researchers have tracked almost a quarter-million cases of COVID back to a single conference in February 2020 which was attended by 200 people. ”
80% of Americans Live East of This Line
“ Hardly anyone lives in a big chunk of the United States, and that pattern is true for most countries. Where cities historically started and thrived comes down to geography and water. ”
Sturgis Here We Come…
“ Using anonymized cell phone tower data, watch how software can track all the Sturgis attendees as they move across the country. ”
The Greatest Privilege We Never Talk About: Beauty
“ Attractive people generally have easier lives. We all know this intuitively, but we rarely acknowledge it. ”
Americans Who Mainly Get Their News on Social Media Are Less Engaged, Less Knowledgeable
“ A survey that seems to prove that consuming news primarily via social media causes you to be less engaged and more likely to fall for conspiracy theories. ”
“ Nigerian immigrants to the United States might be the most successful ethnic group in the country. ”
“ An ordered listing of countries by actual landmass, not simply perceived size, which is affected by mapping distortions. ”
A Plagiarism Scandal Is Unfolding In The Crossword World
“ In 2016, a guy playing around with data discovered too many similarities between crossword puzzles, all centered around a specific editor. ”
The Five Rules of Risk
“ There are five rules that govern our thinking about the risk of certain situations or activities. They cause us to dramatically over- and under- estimate risk. ”
“ There are a stunning number of records kept about the Academy Awards. ”
Mark Buehrle Was Baseball’s Speedrunner
“ Completing a contemporary baseball game in less than two hours is a very rare thing. One particular pitcher seemed to always be trying. ”
The Interminable Body Count
“ It turns out that counting up a death toll for anything is more complicated than you think. Many deaths are very indirect. ”
Are You an Anti-Influencer?
“ The success of a product can be weirdly predicted by its affinity to a particular group of people who are drawn to failure. If they like it, it’s probably not going to survive. ”
Just How Badly Can the Coronavirus Mess Up the Stock Market?
“ A graphical look at how the stock markets reacted during the expansion and contraction phases of various pandemics. ”
The World’s Tallest Buildings Are Shorter Than You Think
“ Skyscrapers have a concept called ‘vanity height’ by which they increase their claimed heights drastically. ”
“ A factual explanation of why helicopters crash more often than planes. ”
The 10 Least Consequential Athletes of the Decade
“ Some athletes who accomplished virtually nothing, from a guy who played in the NBA for 3.9 seconds, to an NFL running back who ended his career with minus-eight yards on one carry. (And there’s one surprise pick.) ”
Who pays the lowest taxes in the US?
“ When you just consider income taxes, wealthy people pay a higher percentage in taxes. But when you consider all the other taxes – payroll, property, and consumption – the curve starts to straighten out. ”
“ Jean Calumet was supposedly 122 when she died. However, a Russian scientist has long-claimed that ‘Jean’ is actually Jean’s daughter, impersonating her mother. ”
Why Are Rich People So Mean?
“ Numerous studies seem to prove that the wealthier someone is compared to the people around them, the more antisocial behaviors they display. ”
Would you give up Google for $17,000 a year? The Federal Reserve wants to know
“ Most of the value created by the Internet doesn’t involve people spending money, so it’s hidden from GDP measures. ”
Whatever happened to Six Sigma?
“ The story of a management theory that came and went, then sort of came back. Everything has a hype cycle, and Six Sigma was no exception ”
Supercentenarians and the oldest-old are concentrated into regions with no birth certificates and short lifespans
“ A big predictor of whether someone will live to age 110 seems to be their birth into a region lacking accurate, preserved birth certificates that could prove their age wrong. ”
Keni Harrison breaks the world record with 12.20 at London Diamond League
“ Keni Harisson set the U.S. record in the 110m hurdles, then shockingly failed to qualify for the Olympics. Yet, in between that heartbreak and the actual Olympic games, while competing against all those who did qualify, she breaks the world record. ”
Debunking the Myth of Small Business Job Creation
“ Contrary to popular belief, small business is not a driver of job growth. Small businesses just grow faster than big business, so they just appear to increase job growth. ”
“ Fascinating TV movie about the Brexit campaign from the perspective of those who wanted to leave. Emphasizes the usages of data, and the deep divisions in British society that the campaign exploited. ”
Data Driven: Harnessing Data and AI to Reinvent Customer Engagement
“An okay book which reveals how high-end digital marketing works. It was written by some guys that went to work for Salesforce when it acquired their company. This is not how you or me do marketing – this is how huge brands like Johnson and Johnson and General Motors do marketing. You know all that…”
Statistics Done Wrong: The Woefully Complete Guide
“You can read this book on three levels – Statistics is easy to screw up. Here are all the ways you can screw them up. Here is the actual math that proves it’s being screwed up. #1 is absolute – you cannot come away from this book without knowing that statistics is a messy science. I got about half…”
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
“This book could literally have been written in 25 pages. I find Taleb incredibly narcissistic. He doesn’t say anything in 1 word that could be said in 10, and his main goal seems to be on injecting himself into the text so we all know how smart he is. There’s a decent point here, but be prepared to…”
Creating a Data-Driven Organization: Practical Advice from the Trenches
“This book approaches big data a little differently than most. It’s less about actually slicing and dicing statistics and is more about the organizational challenges to building an organization that runs on data above all else. The author discusses the cultural challenges – how to avoid the HiPPO…”
Data Science from Scratch: First Principles with Python
“I’m still struggling to find the book I want around data science. I’ve learned that there are two levels: KNOWING data science DOING data science This book is about the second one. Make no mistake, this is a ‘statistical computation’ manual. This shows you how to find statistical answers using…”
Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers Is the New Way to Be Smart
“Throughout this book, the author keeps trying to make the phrase ‘Super Cruncher/ing/ed’ happen. I kept thinking back to the character in Mean Girls that said, ‘Gretchen, stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen. It’s not going to happen.’ It gets distracting. And annoying. It doesn’t help that it sounds…”
Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data
“A genuinely wonderful book. Extremely readable, very informative. He does a nice job of putting statistics in context, particularly around how they can be used to manipulate questions by simply framing issues differently. I’m normally skeptical of ‘For Dummies’ style books that try to simplify…”
Developing Analytic Talent: Becoming a Data Scientist
“i did not enjoy this book at all. i couldn’t figure out, for the life of me, who the target audience is. it appears to be one of three: People wanting a job in some statistical analysis field Business people trying to understand the same Actual statisticians It’s that last one that’s important,…”
Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think
“wonderful book. presents a wire-ranging looking at the big data phenomenon, specifically on the technological and societal changes that have occurred to bring it about, and what this means to the future. things like: Our sample sizes are increasing. For many applications, we’re able to poll n =…”