The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

by Tim Harford

doubt is a really easy product to make.

More sophisticated participants in the experiment found more material to back up their preconceptions.

We see a claim, and our response is immediately shaped by whether we believe “That’s what people like me think.”

Sometimes personal experience tells us one thing, the statistics tell us something quite different, and both are true.

Most of the concepts that matter in policy are not like beans; they are not merely difficult to count, but difficult to define.

But if we don’t understand the definition, then there is little point in looking at the numbers. We have fooled ourselves before we have begun.

So when media outlets want to grab our attention, they look for stories that are novel and unexpected over a short time horizon—and these stories are more likely to be bad than good.

most people think that all is well for them personally but are worried about the society they live in.

however much news you choose to read, make sure you spend time looking for longer-term, slower-paced information.

if a particular way of analyzing the data produces no result, and a different way produces something more intriguing, then of course the more interesting method is likely to be what is reported and then published.

The famous psychological results are famous not because they are the most rigorously demonstrated, but because they’re interesting.

Business writing—a field in which I confess to dabbling—is dripping with examples of survivorship bias.

any fund still in existence is a survivor—and that introduces a survivorship bias.