Everydata
The Misinformation Hidden in the Little Data You Consume Every Day
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- 35,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
While everyone is talking about "big data," the truth is that understanding the "little data"--the stats that underlie newspaper headlines, stock reports, weather forecasts, and so on--is what helps you make smarter decisions at work, at home, and in every aspect of your life. The average person consumes approximately 30 gigabytes of data every single day, but has no idea how to interpret it correctly. EVERYDATA explains, through the eyes of an expert economist and statistician, how to decipher the small bytes of data we consume in a day. EVERYDATA is filled with countless examples of people misconstruing data--with results that range from merely frustrating to catastrophic: The space shuttle Challenger exploded in part because the engineers were reviewing a limited sample set. Millions of women avoid caffeine during pregnancy because they interpret correlation as causation. Attorneys faced a $1 billion jury verdict because of outlier data. Each chapter highlights one commonly misunderstood data concept, using both realworld and hypothetical examples from a wide range of topics, including business, politics, advertising, law, engineering, retail, parenting, and more. You'll find the answer to the question--"Now what?"--along with concrete ways you can use this information to immediately start making smarter decisions, today and every day.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Though much has been written about the ways in which companies collect and use personal data, the topic of how average citizens use and process data on a daily basis is less widely understood. Statistician Johnson and writer Gluck address and begin to remedy this discrepancy with their overview of how information is rendered and represented, and how it should be interpreted. The authors cover many basic statistical concepts as they explain how easily data is manipulated and misinterpreted. Studies, for example, can suffer from methodological failures such as improper sampling, and information can be misleading when it is cherry-picked. This book points out these pitfalls and educates readers on how to navigate the increasingly dense information environment. The authors hit key points on the importance of information literacy today, but even as an overview, it jumps from topic to topic a little too quickly.
