How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking

by Jordan Ellenberg

Not “succeeds once in giving,” but “rarely fails to give.” A statistically significant finding gives you a clue, suggesting a promising place to focus your research energy. The significance test is the detective, not the judge. You know how when you read an article about a breakthrough finding that this thing causes that thing, or that thing prevents the other thing, and at the end there’s always a banal sort of quote from a senior scientist not involved in the study intoning some very minor variant of “The finding is quite interesting, and suggests that more research in this direction is needed”? And how you don’t really even read that part because you think of it as an obligatory warning without content? Here’s the thing—the reason scientists always say that is because it’s important and it’s true!