Os Números (Não) Mentem: Como A Matemática Pode Ser Usada Para Enganar Você (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
C. Seife writes a layman's social statistics "text" complete with entertaining terminology in place of statistical jargon. He lays bare the common errors of believing numbers verbatim. This is a good awakening to the daily abuse and misuse of statistics that manipulate our economy, politics and society. He elaborates how proofiness distorts elections, census, court cases, polls, investments, news media, redistricting, business ventures and much more. His arguements, sometimes a bit proofy in themselves, demonstrates how immersed our society is in faulty numeric rational.Seife succinctly sums it all up: "There's no institution in a democracy that's immune (to proofiness)." I enjoyed the first few chapters then started to become bored, then skipped most of the last third of the book. Boredom is partially explained by the focus on US politics and elections for examples of "proofiness", that is, the misuse of mathematics to establish "truth". Every source of proofiness was interesting, and the names given to different aspects of proofiness were fun, e.g., "polishing the apple", "misestimation", etc, but for my tastes, the book was longer than necessary.
What do You think about Os Números (Não) Mentem: Como A Matemática Pode Ser Usada Para Enganar Você (2012)?
I think this book should be required reading for everyone taking an intro to statistics course.
—daphnevdn
Thanks to this book I will never waste my time reading another poll of any kind again.
—madisonmaguire
Highly recommended, very relevant and readable.
—sheashea
