Some fabulous books about numbers
I had a treat over Christmas avoiding Twitter and reading pre-releases of books about maths. The joys! Two particular pearls are about to be released.
The Art of Statistics (US) (UK) by Sir David Spiegelhalter should be self-recommending, but this is a really first class introduction to the power of statistics. David starts with some basics (categories, proportions, visualisation) but by the end of the book has covered big data analytics, confidence intervals, Bayesian statistics and much else. It’s a remarkably accessible read, full of powerful examples, but covers technical ground too, where appropriate. I can’t think of a better starting point for someone who wants to become a statistician or to use statistics in any professional way, and it covers most of what the lay-person would need. Bravo!
Humble Pi (US) (UK) by Matt Parker is a very funny collection of tales of mathematical, programming or engineering errors, generally with non-fatal consequences, although there are a few billion dollars lost here and there. Matt smuggles in a great deal of wisdom and geeky detail – for example, how to produce a rounding error when asking Excel to subtract 0.4 and 0.1 from 0.5. I loved the book.
I’ve also just caught up with the existence of Is That A Big Number? (US) (UK) by Andrew Elliott, which offers much wisdom for putting numbers into perspective by visualising, estimating or comparing them. One idea I particularly liked was the “landmark number” (for example: a book is about 100,000 words long; it’s a 3000 miles or 5,000km drive from Boston to Seattle) – having a few of these numbers in your head or at your fingertips for comparative purposes is much to be recommended.
Next up, Invisible Women (US) (UK) by Caroline Criado Perez, about the way the data we gather often omits or short-changes women. An important topic and the book is getting good reviews. I’ll report back.
See also: Books about algorithms. Books about statistical bullshit.
My book “Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy” (UK) / “Fifty Inventions That Shaped The Modern Economy” (US) is out now in paperback – feel free to order online or through your local bookshop.
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