A very fun and informative book explaining how to dive deeper into numerical data. This requires surprisingly little math, but explains in-depth how to find the information that matters when you are told numbers, as they may or may not be the numbers that answer the question you are asking. Have a blast!
Author(s): Derrick Niederman and David Boyum
Edition: 1
Publisher: Broadway Books, Random House Inc
Year: 2003
Language: English
Commentary: Sorry for the lack of info at times, I'm a noob at this. I pulled this from a website where the only download method was a bunch of screenshots. I didn't realize the blank pages were important, so I left them out, along with the back cover. So there's that. But all of the words are there, and it has a really large margin - which is nice for taking notes. This book was printed to PDF in Landscape format, with two pages side by side on each page. This is a quirk of the strange scanning process, but I hope this still comes in handy!
Pages: 267
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
1 - The Quantitative Information Age
2 - The Ten Habits of Highly Effective Quantitative Thinkers
Attitude is everything
Navigational Tools
Illuminating Numbers
Uncertainty
Estimation
3 - For Good Measure
Units 101
What Is an Acre?
Conversions: Putting Units Together
Taking the Measure of Measurement
One Size Fits All?
Bias and Precision
Beware of Strangers Bearing Zeros
4 - Playing the Percentages
The Linearity Trap
The Trap of Negative Returns
Percents of Percents
When Percentages Aren't the Answer
The 0-to-100 Trap
You Can't Get There from Here
Percentages, Policy, and Pareto
Epilogue
5 - Gaining Perspective
Orders of Magnitude and the Principle of Proximity
Numbers on a National Scale
Pareto's Law and Political Symbolism
The Trouble with Small Numbers
How Small Things Become Big
Sensitive Numbers
Survivorship Bias
The Tactics of Big Numbers
6 - Throwing a Curve
Modeling Through Hidden Curves
At the Margin
Square Curves
Exponential Growth
The Rule of 72
Exponential Decay
Curvature in Policy: Progressive Taxation
The Curvature of the Flat Tax
Ponzi Schemes, Savings and Loans, and Social Security
7 - Taking Chances
What Is Probability?
The Frequentist School
Subjective Probability
Expressing Probabilities
The Arithmetic of Probabilities
Second-Guessing Yourself
Bayes Watch
Babylonian Oddsmaking
Probability Distributions
8 - The Proof Is in the Numbers
The Power of Randomness
Back to Normal
Correlation and Causation
Testing the Hypothesis
Sample Sizes
Data Mining
Survey Research
Deviations from the Mean
9 - A Peace Offering for the Math Wars
The Math Wars
Math versus Quantitative Reasoning
The Role of Mathematics Education
Less Is More
Relieving the Tedium
The Mixed Blessing of Calculators
The Glass Is Half Full
The Glass Is Half Empty
The Role of Governmet
Endnotes
Notes
About the Author
Copyright Page
