We’ve all heard (and likely said), “Correlation is not causation,” but after reading this book you’ll look at both correlation and causation in a whole new way.
Not only is the statistical reasoning in this book flawless, but the examples given are surprising and fascinating (like how a genetics researcher is responsible for the Plinko game on the game show The Price Is Right; he built the pinball-sorting board to model how inherited traits distribute into a bell-shaped curve).
'Wonderful ... illuminating and fun to read' - Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow
'"Pearl's accomplishments over the last 30 years have provided the theoretical basis for progress in artificial intelligence and have redefined the term "thinking machine"' - Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist, Google, Inc.
The influential book in how causality revolutionized science and the world, by the pioneer of artificial intelligence
'Correlation does not imply causation.' This mantra was invoked by scientists for decades in order to avoid taking positions as to whether one thing caused another, such as smoking…
This book is fantastic. It shares exciting data stories from history (like how W. E. B. Du Bois used data and statistical reasoning to take down racist insurance practices during the US’s tragic Jim Crow era) and also covers modern applications like data in AI algorithms.
This book makes a great complement to Friendly and Wainer’s 2021 book: A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication.
From facial recognition-capable of checking us onto flights or identifying undocumented residents-to automated decision systems that inform everything from who gets loans to who receives bail, each of us moves through a world determined by data-empowered algorithms. But these technologies didn't just appear: they are part of a history that goes back centuries, from the birth of eugenics in Victorian Britain to the development of Google search.
Expanding on the popular course they created at Columbia University, Chris Wiggins and Matthew Jones illuminate the ways in which data has long been used as a tool and a weapon in arguing…
This is a fun read! The author is so playful that he even numbers the book’s pages backwards in homage to numerical mistakes. I took this book on a trip and couldn’t put it down.
It reminds me of Cautionary Tales, one of the great podcasts brought to us by Tim Harford (another author who writes and speaks about data).
The book-length answer to anyone who ever put their hand up in math class and asked, “When am I ever going to use this in the real world?”
“Fun, informative, and relentlessly entertaining, Humble Pi is a charming and very readable guide to some of humanity's all-time greatest miscalculations—that also gives you permission to feel a little better about some of your own mistakes.” —Ryan North, author of How to Invent Everything
Our whole world is built on math, from the code running a website to the equations enabling the design…
Knowledge only has an impact if it is shared widely and well.
If
you want to share what you know, you cannot merely state facts because people
forget most of what they read or hear, and they can even resist your
information. This book empowers you to bypass such problems by
communicating findings widely and effectively.
The book helps you break into the media (e.g., land interviews,
be a go-to expert on the news, etc.) and share knowledge through a variety of
platforms (book deals, TED Talks, conference keynotes/plenaries, podcasts,
etc.). It also helps you leverage social media in practical, time-saving ways
to propel your brand as an expert. Networking, winning honors, and other
avenues for getting information to go viral are also covered.
