By Michael Blastland
The Strunk & White of data staff as much as support the typical individual navigate the numbers within the news.
Drawing on their highly well known BBC Radio four convey More or Less,, journalist Michael Blastland and the world over recognized economist Andrew Dilnot satisfaction, amuse, and convert American mathphobes through displaying how our daily reports make feel of numbers.
the unconventional premise of The Numbers Game is to teach how a lot we already be aware of, and provides sensible how one can use our wisdom to develop into cannier shoppers of the media. In each one concise bankruptcy, the authors tackle a special theme—such as measurement, likelihood, averages, pursuits, chance, dimension, and data—and current it as a memorable and pleasing story.
If you’ve ever puzzled what “average” relatively potential, no matter if the scare tales approximately melanoma hazard should still persuade you to alter your habit, or even if a narrative you learn within the paper is biased (and how), you would like this booklet. Blastland and Dilnot exhibit easy methods to live to tell the tale and thrive at the torrent of numbers that pours via way of life. It’s the fundamental advisor to each reason you're keen on or hate, and each factor you stick with, within the language each person makes use of.
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Extra resources for The Numbers Game: The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, and inLife
Sample text
The other "gene for" MS is present in about 78 percent of those who have MS and 75 percent of those who don't. These differences are real, as far as researchers can tell, but tiny. For any individual, the chance of developing multiple sclerosis is almost unaltered whether they have the genes or not, namely, extremely small in both cases. MS is thought to have a prevalence of between about 100 and 200 per 100,000, depending where you live. It is a rare illness and its prevalence is only minutely increased among those who have the genes "for" it.
Numbers do grow because people try to pull the wool over our eyes, sure enough, but also because they are themselves muddled, or so eager for evidence for their cause that they forgo plausibility. Maybe the Daily Telegraph journalists, writing about dying pensioners, were so taken with the notion that Prime Minister Blair and company were beastly to old folk who had slaved for an honest crust, that they allowed this apparently satisfying notion to make mush of their numeracy. This tendency of big brains to become addled over size is why the peddlers of numbers often know less about them than their audience, namely, not much; and why questions are always legitimate, however simple.
NHS spending is equivalent to about PS1,600 per head, per year (in 2007), of which 1 percent is PS16 (about $32), or less than the cost of one visit to a GP (about PS18). No doubt there was mismanagement in the NHS in 2006 and, within the total deficit, there were big variations between the individual NHS trusts, some of which faced a genuine problem, but given the immense size of that organization, was it of crisis proportions, dooming the entirety? It is often true that the most important question to ask about a number--and you would be amazed how infrequently people do--is the simplest.