How to Make the World Add Up Quotes

“Much of what we think of as cultural differences turn out to be differences in income.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“Ten rules of thumb are still a lot for anyone to remember, so perhaps I should try to make things simpler. I realize that these suggestions have a common thread—a golden rule, if you like. Be curious.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“I’ve laid down ten statistical commandments in this book. First, we should learn to stop and notice our emotional reaction to a claim, rather than accepting or rejecting it because of how it makes us feel. Second, we should look for ways to combine the “bird’s eye” statistical perspective with the “worm’s eye” view from personal experience. Third, we should look at the labels on the data we’re being given, and ask if we understand what’s really being described. Fourth, we should look for comparisons and context, putting any claim into perspective. Fifth, we should look behind the statistics at where they came from—and what other data might have vanished into obscurity. Sixth, we should ask who is missing from the data we’re being shown, and whether our conclusions might differ if they were included. Seventh, we should ask tough questions about algorithms and the big datasets that drive them, recognizing that without intelligent openness they cannot be trusted. Eighth, we should pay more attention to the bedrock of official statistics—and the sometimes heroic statisticians who protect it. Ninth, we should look under the surface of any beautiful graph or chart. And tenth, we should keep an open mind, asking how we might be mistaken, and whether the facts have changed.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”)”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“So the problem is not the algorithms, or the big datasets. The problem is a lack of scrutiny, transparency, and debate.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“Not asking what a statistic actually means is a failure of empathy, too.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“trust is easy to throw away and hard to regain.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“Van Meegeren wasn’t an artistic genius, but he intuitively understood something about human nature. Sometimes, we want to be fooled.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“A hammer looks like a useful tool to a carpenter; the nail has a different impression altogether”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“The algorithm seemed to be really good at distinguishing the two rather similar canines; it turned out that it was simply labeling any picture with snow as containing a wolf. An example with more serious implications was described by Janelle Shane in her book You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: an algorithm that was shown pictures of healthy skin and of skin cancer. The algorithm figured out the pattern: if there was a ruler in the photograph, it was cancer.7 If we don’t know why the algorithm is doing what it’s doing, we’re trusting our lives to a ruler detector.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“Whatever we’re trying to understand about the world, each other, and ourselves, we won’t get far without statistics – any more than we can hope to examine bones without an X-ray, bacteria without a microscope, or the heavens without a telescope.”
― Tim Harford, How to Make the World Add Up : Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers

“A hammer looks like a useful tool to a carpenter; the nail has a different impression altogether.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“The word “see” is often used as a direct synonym for “understand”—“I see what you mean.” Yet sometimes we see but we don’t understand; worse, we see, then “understand” something that isn’t true at all. Done well, a picture of data is worth the proverbial thousand words.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“the “curse of knowledge” is a constant obstacle to clear communication: once you know a subject fairly well, it is enormously difficult to put yourself in the position of someone who doesn’t know it.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“curious person, however, enjoys being surprised and hungers for the unexpected.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“Specifically, Kahan identified “scientific curiosity.” That’s different from scientific literacy. The two qualities are correlated, of course, but there are curious people who know rather little about science (yet), and highly trained people with little appetite to learn more.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“we should keep an open mind, asking how we might be mistaken, and whether the facts have changed.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“we should ask who is missing from the data we’re being shown, and whether our conclusions might differ if they were included.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“One important error that the judges make is what American legal scholar Cass Sunstein calls “current offense bias”—that is, when they make decisions about bail, they focus too much on the specific offense the defendant has been accused of. Defendants whose track record suggests they’re a high risk are treated as low risk if they’re accused of a minor crime, and defendants whose track record suggests they’re low risk are treated as high risk if the current offense is serious. There’s valuable information here that the algorithm puts to good use, but the human judges—for all their intelligence, experience, and training—tend to overlook it.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“The good stories are everywhere. They are not made memorable by their rarity; they are made forgettable by their ubiquity.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“the diagram “is to affect thro’ the Eyes what we may fail to convey to the brains of the public through their word-proof eyes.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“Neuroscientific studies suggest that the brain responds in much the same anxious way to facts that threaten our preconceptions as it does to wild animals that threaten our lives.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“The experimental subjects found it much easier to argue against positions they disliked than in favor of those they supported. There was a special power in doubt. Doubt”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“These examples should be models for communication, precisely because they inspire curiosity. “How does money influence politics?” is not an especially engaging question, but “If I were running for president, how would I raise lots of money with few conditions and no scrutiny?” is much more intriguing.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“It’s a rather beautiful discovery: in a world where so many people seem to hold extreme views with strident certainty, you can deflate somebody’s overconfidence and moderate their politics simply by asking them to explain the details. Next time you’re in a politically heated argument, try asking your interlocutor not to justify herself, but simply to explain the policy in question. She wants to introduce a universal basic income, or a flat tax, or a points-based immigration system, or Medicare for all. OK, that’s interesting. So what exactly does she mean by that? She may learn something as she tries to explain. So may you. And you may both find that you understand a little less, and agree a little more, than you had assumed.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“The importance of the base rate was made famous by the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who coined the phrase “the outside view and the inside view.” The inside view means looking at the specific case in front of you: this couple. The outside view requires you to look at a more general “comparison class” of cases—here, the comparison class is all married couples. (The outside view needn’t be statistical, but it often will be.)”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“If the story you’re reading is about health, there’s one place you should be sure to look for a second opinion: the Cochrane Collaboration.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“A more plausible explanation is that we are drawn to surprising news, and surprising news is more often bad than good.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“Kahneman, Nobel laureate and one of the fathers of behavioral economics, calls overconfidence “the most significant of the cognitive biases.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics

“asking about sampling errors and margins of error, debating if the number is rising or falling, believing, doubting, analyzing, dissecting—without taking the time to understand the first and most obvious fact: What is being measured, or counted? What definition is being used? Yet while this pitfall is common, it doesn’t seem to have acquired a name. My suggestion is “premature enumeration.”
― Tim Harford, The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics