The Data Detective

The Data Detective PDF Author: Tim Harford
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593084667
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
From “one of the great (greatest?) contemporary popular writers on economics” (Tyler Cowen) comes a smart, lively, and encouraging rethinking of how to use statistics. Today we think statistics are the enemy, numbers used to mislead and confuse us. That’s a mistake, Tim Harford says in The Data Detective. We shouldn’t be suspicious of statistics—we need to understand what they mean and how they can improve our lives: they are, at heart, human behavior seen through the prism of numbers and are often “the only way of grasping much of what is going on around us.” If we can toss aside our fears and learn to approach them clearly—understanding how our own preconceptions lead us astray—statistics can point to ways we can live better and work smarter. As “perhaps the best popular economics writer in the world” (New Statesman), Tim Harford is an expert at taking complicated ideas and untangling them for millions of readers. In The Data Detective, he uses new research in science and psychology to set out ten strategies for using statistics to erase our biases and replace them with new ideas that use virtues like patience, curiosity, and good sense to better understand ourselves and the world. As a result, The Data Detective is a big-idea book about statistics and human behavior that is fresh, unexpected, and insightful.

The Data Detective

The Data Detective PDF Author: Tim Harford
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593084667
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book

Book Description
From “one of the great (greatest?) contemporary popular writers on economics” (Tyler Cowen) comes a smart, lively, and encouraging rethinking of how to use statistics. Today we think statistics are the enemy, numbers used to mislead and confuse us. That’s a mistake, Tim Harford says in The Data Detective. We shouldn’t be suspicious of statistics—we need to understand what they mean and how they can improve our lives: they are, at heart, human behavior seen through the prism of numbers and are often “the only way of grasping much of what is going on around us.” If we can toss aside our fears and learn to approach them clearly—understanding how our own preconceptions lead us astray—statistics can point to ways we can live better and work smarter. As “perhaps the best popular economics writer in the world” (New Statesman), Tim Harford is an expert at taking complicated ideas and untangling them for millions of readers. In The Data Detective, he uses new research in science and psychology to set out ten strategies for using statistics to erase our biases and replace them with new ideas that use virtues like patience, curiosity, and good sense to better understand ourselves and the world. As a result, The Data Detective is a big-idea book about statistics and human behavior that is fresh, unexpected, and insightful.

The Data Detective

The Data Detective PDF Author: Tim Harford
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0593084675
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
From “one of the great (greatest?) contemporary popular writers on economics” (Tyler Cowen) comes a smart, lively, and encouraging rethinking of how to use statistics. Today we think statistics are the enemy, numbers used to mislead and confuse us. That’s a mistake, Tim Harford says in The Data Detective. We shouldn’t be suspicious of statistics—we need to understand what they mean and how they can improve our lives: they are, at heart, human behavior seen through the prism of numbers and are often “the only way of grasping much of what is going on around us.” If we can toss aside our fears and learn to approach them clearly—understanding how our own preconceptions lead us astray—statistics can point to ways we can live better and work smarter. As “perhaps the best popular economics writer in the world” (New Statesman), Tim Harford is an expert at taking complicated ideas and untangling them for millions of readers. In The Data Detective, he uses new research in science and psychology to set out ten strategies for using statistics to erase our biases and replace them with new ideas that use virtues like patience, curiosity, and good sense to better understand ourselves and the world. As a result, The Data Detective is a big-idea book about statistics and human behavior that is fresh, unexpected, and insightful.

How to Make the World Add Up

How to Make the World Add Up PDF Author: Tim Harford
Publisher: Abacus
ISBN: 9780349143866
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
Factfulness meets How to Be Right in this major new book from globally bestselling economist Tim Harford 'Tim Harford is our most likeable champion of reason and rigour... clear, clever and always highly readable' Times Books of the Year 'If you aren't in love with stats before reading this book, you will be by the time you're done. Powerful, persuasive, and in these truth-defying times, indispensable' Caroline Criado Perez, author of Invisible Women 'Nobody makes the statistics of everyday life more fascinating and enjoyable than Tim Harford' Bill Bryson 'Fabulously readable, lucid, witty and authoritative . . . Every politician and journalist should be made to read this book, but everyone else will get so much pleasure and draw so much strength from the joyful way it dispels the clouds of deceit and delusion' Stephen Fry 'Wise, humane and, above all, illuminating. Nobody is better on statistics and numbers - and how to make sense of them' Matthew Syed THE SUNDAY TIMES BUSINESS BESTSELLER When was the last time you read a grand statement, accompanied by a large number, and wondered whether it could really be true? Statistics are vital in helping us tell stories - we see them in the papers, on social media, and we hear them used in everyday conversation - and yet we doubt them more than ever. But numbers - in the right hands - have the power to change the world for the better. Contrary to popular belief, good statistics are not a trick, although they are a kind of magic. Good statistics are not smoke and mirrors; in fact, they help us see more clearly. Good statistics are like a telescope for an astronomer, a microscope for a bacteriologist, or an X-ray for a radiologist. If we are willing to let them, good statistics help us see things about the world around us and about ourselves - both large and small - that we would not be able to see in any other way. In How to Make the World Add Up, Tim Harford draws on his experience as both an economist and presenter of the BBC's radio show 'More or Less'. He takes us deep into the world of disinformation and obfuscation, bad research and misplaced motivation to find those priceless jewels of data and analysis that make communicating with numbers worthwhile. Harford's characters range from the art forger who conned the Nazis to the stripper who fell in love with the most powerful congressman in Washington, to famous data detectives such as John Maynard Keynes, Daniel Kahneman and Florence Nightingale. He reveals how we can evaluate the claims that surround us with confidence, curiosity and a healthy level of scepticism. Using ten simple rules for understanding numbers - plus one golden rule - this extraordinarily insightful book shows how if we keep our wits about us, thinking carefully about the way numbers are sourced and presented, we can look around us and see with crystal clarity how the world adds up.

Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data

Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread from the Data PDF Author: Charles Wheelan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393089827
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
A New York Times bestseller "Brilliant, funny…the best math teacher you never had." —San Francisco Chronicle 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 show Let’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.

The CS Detective

The CS Detective PDF Author: Jeremy Kubica
Publisher: No Starch Press
ISBN: 1593277490
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Meet Frank Runtime. Disgraced ex-detective. Hard-boiled private eye. Search expert. When a robbery hits police headquarters, it’s up to Frank Runtime and his extensive search skills to catch the culprits. In this detective story, you’ll learn how to use algorithmic tools to solve the case. Runtime scours smugglers’ boats with binary search, tails spies with a search tree, escapes a prison with depth-first search, and picks locks with priority queues. Joined by know-it-all rookie Officer Notation and inept tag-along Socks, he follows a series of leads in a best-first search that unravels a deep conspiracy. Each chapter introduces a thrilling twist matched with a new algorithmic concept, ending with a technical recap. Perfect for computer science students and amateur sleuths alike, The CS Detective adds an entertaining twist to learning algorithms. Follow Frank’s mission and learn: –The algorithms behind best-first and depth-first search, iterative deepening, parallelizing, binary search, and more –Basic computational concepts like strings, arrays, stacks, and queues –How to adapt search algorithms to unusual data structures –The most efficient algorithms to use in a given situation, and when to apply common-sense heuristic methods

The Data Detective's Toolkit

The Data Detective's Toolkit PDF Author: Kim Chantala
Publisher: SAS Institute
ISBN: 1952363020
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
Reduce the cost and time of cleaning, managing, and preparing research data while also improving data quality! Have you ever wished there was an easy way to reduce your workload and improve the quality of your data? The Data Detective’s Toolkit: Cutting-Edge Techniques and SAS Macros to Clean, Prepare, and Manage Data will help you automate many of the labor-intensive tasks needed to turn raw data into high-quality, analysis-ready data. You will find the right tools and techniques in this book to reduce the amount of time needed to clean, edit, validate, and document your data. These tools include SAS macros as well as ingenious ways of using SAS procedures and functions. The innovative logic built into the book’s macro programs enables you to monitor the quality of your data using information from the formats and labels created for the variables in your data set. The book explains how to harmonize data sets that need to be combined and automate data cleaning tasks to detect errors in data including out-of-range values, inconsistent flow through skip paths, missing data, no variation in values for a variable, and duplicates. By the end of this book, you will be able to automatically produce codebooks, crosswalks, and data catalogs.

The Analytic Detective

The Analytic Detective PDF Author: Steve Leeds
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781737308102
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
Following the clues that lead to increased sales or greater profits takes more than uncovering big data. Without effective data translation and communication, even the most sophisticated analytic effort can end in confusion - and your data insights won't impact company decision making. With practical advice for the every data analyst, this is your guide to navigating all aspects of client interaction and communicating straightforward solutions to affect company-wide change - from the back room to the board room. You'll learn: How to hit the Analytic Trifecta to ensure you're producing useful findings. How to design a clear story that summarizes business analytics. Different analyst behaviors for the 10 specific client types. Strategies to employ when a client challenges your analysis. How successful analysts get their work noticed. Become an irreplaceable analytic asset to your team. Get The Analytic Detective to start collaborating for more data-fueled results and more recognition in your career.

Show Me the Data!

Show Me the Data! PDF Author: RinaMarie S. Leon-Guerrero
Publisher: AAPC Publishing
ISBN: 9781934575734
Category : Autism spectrum disorders
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
Data collection is one of the critical elements of an effective, efficient, and accountable program that supports student development and learning. However, many intervention teams struggle to develop reasonable and sustainable methods of gathering information about student performance and progress. Now comes SHOW ME THE DATA! This must-have resource consists of a brief discussion on data collection accompanied by a CD containing a comprehensive compilation of data sheets to help make that once-dreaded task easier and simpler.

The Ecological Detective

The Ecological Detective PDF Author: Ray Hilborn
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400847311
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
The modern ecologist usually works in both the field and laboratory, uses statistics and computers, and often works with ecological concepts that are model-based, if not model-driven. How do we make the field and laboratory coherent? How do we link models and data? How do we use statistics to help experimentation? How do we integrate modeling and statistics? How do we confront multiple hypotheses with data and assign degrees of belief to different hypotheses? How do we deal with time series (in which data are linked from one measurement to the next) or put multiple sources of data into one inferential framework? These are the kinds of questions asked and answered by The Ecological Detective. Ray Hilborn and Marc Mangel investigate ecological data much as a detective would investigate a crime scene by trying different hypotheses until a coherent picture emerges. The book is not a set of pat statistical procedures but rather an approach. The Ecological Detective makes liberal use of computer programming for the generation of hypotheses, exploration of data, and the comparison of different models. The authors' attitude is one of exploration, both statistical and graphical. The background required is minimal, so that students with an undergraduate course in statistics and ecology can profitably add this work to their tool-kit for solving ecological problems.

Privacy is Power

Privacy is Power PDF Author: Carissa Veliz
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 161219916X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
An Economist Book of the Year Every minute of every day, our data is harvested and exploited… It is time to pull the plug on the surveillance economy. Governments and hundreds of corporations are spying on you, and everyone you know. They're not just selling your data. They're selling the power to influence you and decide for you. Even when you've explicitly asked them not to. Reclaiming privacy is the only way we can regain control of our lives and our societies. These governments and corporations have too much power, and their power stems from us--from our data. Privacy is as collective as it is personal, and it's time to take back control. Privacy Is Power tells you how to do exactly that. It calls for the end of the data economy and proposes concrete measures to bring that end about, offering practical solutions, both for policymakers and ordinary citizens.