Think in Numbers

About this book

A headline says a drug doubles your risk. A test is 90% accurate. Polls are neck and neck. Average salaries are up. Each of these can be true and still leave you badly misled. Think in Numbers is a friendly, hands-on course in the twenty or so ideas that let you see through numerical claims, written for adults with no math background. You will learn the difference between relative and absolute risk, why base rates matter so much when you read a positive test result, why the average can mislead, what a margin of error really means, why correlation is not causation, how to tell a strong study from a weak one, what p-values do and do not say, and how regression to the mean and survivorship bias fool smart people. Further chapters cover probability, expected value for everyday decisions, exponential growth, comparing risks and spotting misleading charts. Every idea is built on worked examples using natural frequencies, not formulas, and many come from real cases such as the 1995 UK contraceptive pill scare, the kidney-stone paradox and the Sally Clark trial. Each chapter ends with exercises, 78 in all, with fully worked answers. The book closes with a one-page claim checklist and ten practice headlines to analyze. Includes a printable answers-and-glossary PDF in your library.

1. 1Printable worksheets & templates (PDF)All appendices of the book as a print-ready PDF.568 KB Buyers only

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