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

by Tim Harford

It’s not that we feel every statistic is a lie, but that we feel helpless to pick out the truths. So we believe whatever we want to believe (more on that in the next chapter), and for the rest we adopt Huff’s response: a harsh laugh, a shrug, or both.

Of course, we shouldn’t be credulous—but the antidote to credulity isn’t to believe nothing, but to have the confidence to assess information with curiosity and a healthy skepticism.

“There are a lot of small data problems that occur in big data,” added Spiegelhalter. “They don’t disappear because you’ve got lots of the stuff. They get worse.”

Facts are valuable things, and so is fact-checking. But if we really want people to understand complex issues, we need to engage their curiosity. If people are curious, they will learn.

“The cure for boredom is curiosity,” goes an old saying. “There is no cure for curiosity.”15 Just so: once we start to peer beneath the surface of things, become aware of the gaps in our knowledge, and treat each question as the path to a better question, we find that curiosity is habit-forming.

This may be the quote of the book for me, and I want it on my wall :)

there is a place in life for the mean-minded, hard-nosed skepticism that asks, Where’s the trick? Why is this lying bastard lying to me?16 But while “I don’t believe it” is sometimes the right starting point when confronted with a surprising statistical claim, it is a lazy and depressing place to finish.