W. W. Norton & Company | 2014 | 304 páginas | epub | 1 Mb
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Once considered tedious, the field of statistics is rapidly evolving into a discipline Hal Varian, chief economist at Google, has actually called “sexy.” From batting averages and political polls to game shows and medical research, the real-world application of statistics continues to grow by leaps and bounds. How can we catch schools that cheat on standardized tests? How does Netflix know which movies you’ll like? What is causing the rising incidence of autism? As best-selling author Charles Wheelan shows us in Naked Statistics, the right data and a few well-chosen statistical tools can help us answer these questions and more.
For those who slept through Stats 101, this book is a lifesaver. Wheelan strips away the arcane and technical details and focuses on the underlying intuition that drives statistical analysis. He clarifies key concepts such as inference, correlation, and regression analysis, reveals how biased or careless parties can manipulate or misrepresent data, and shows us how brilliant and creative researchers are exploiting the valuable data from natural experiments to tackle thorny questions.
And in Wheelan’s trademark style, there’s not a dull page in sight. You’ll encounter clever Schlitz Beer marketers leveraging basic probability, an International Sausage Festival illuminating the tenets of the central limit theorem, and a head-scratching choice from the famous game showLet’s Make a Deal—and you’ll come away with insights each time. With the wit, accessibility, and sheer fun that turned Naked Economics into a bestseller, Wheelan defies the odds yet again by bringing another essential, formerly unglamorous discipline to life.
Contents
Introduction: Why I hated calculus but love statistics
1 What’s the Point?
2 Descriptive Statistics: Who was the best baseball player of all time?
3 Deceptive Description: “He’s got a great personality!” and other true but grossly misleading statements
4 Correlation: How does Netflix know what movies I like?
5 Basic Probability: Don’t buy the extended warranty on your $99 printer
5½ The Monty Hall Problem
6 Problems with Probability: How overconfident math geeks nearly destroyed the global financial system
7 The Importance of Data: “Garbage in, garbage out”
8 The Central Limit Theorem: The Lebron James of statistics
9 Inference: Why my statistics professor thought I might have cheated
10 Polling: How we know that 64 percent of Americans support the death penalty (with a sampling error ± 3 percent)
11 Regression Analysis: The miracle elixir
12 Common Regression Mistakes: The mandatory warning label
13 Program Evaluation: Will going to Harvard change your life?
Conclusion: Five questions that statistics can help answer
Appendix: Statistical software
Notes
Acknowledgments
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