IAN MANN REVIEWS - Lies, damn lies, and statistics: Understanding data better | Book Review - News24

If only all numbers were simple, says Ian Man, Contributor — Fin24. But they're not.

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The Number Bias: How Numbers Lead and Mislead Us, by Sanne Blauw 

Quick! How many numbers have you seen today that report on what is going on in the world? 

Many! The beauty of numbers is that they (supposedly) don't lie. Either there are 28 boxes on the shelf or there aren't. Either there is R36.67 in your account or there isn't.
If only all numbers were that simple. The most important are not, and therein lies the value of this easily accessible and entertaining book that spent weeks on the bestseller lists in the Netherlands.

Author Sanne Blauw has a PhD in econometrics and wrote this book to educate and reveal the limitations and dangers of what we take far too lightly. 

Numbers, it emerges, are not always that reliable...

Some 69 years ago, in his book How to Lie with Statistics, Huff showed that one can make a good estimate of the number of children in a house by counting the number of storks that nest on its roof. As you know storks don't cause babies, even though the number of storks may correlate with the number of babies.  
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Source: News24