Quick Reads: “Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread From the Data” By Charles Wheelan

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Right now is no time to come up short. It's time to fight like hell for a democracy where minority rule cannot impose an extreme and cruel agenda, where facts matter, and where accountability at the polls and in the press has a fighting chance. We have our work cut out for us, and we still need to raise upwards of 400,000 by June 30 to give it everything we can. Please help:

Naked Statistics: Stripping the Dread From the Data

By Charles Wheelan

W.W. NORTON & COMPANY

A couple of years ago, Google’s chief economist predicted, “The sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians.” (Hello, Nate Silver!) If you aren’t quite ready to spend your life running regressions, Naked Statistics provides a taste of the hot data action. With a dollop of corny jokes and just a dash of math, Charles Wheelan (a Dartmouth prof) offers a conversational introduction to the concepts you need to understand everything from why “rich nerds” should have seen the 2008 Wall Street collapse coming to the best strategy for winning a car on Let’s Make a Deal. If your interest in statistics is above average, this book is worth sampling.

This review originally appeared in our January/February issue of Mother Jones.