Michael Blastland - The Numbers Game: The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News,in Politics, and in L Ife

Table of Contents

PRAISE FOR THE UK EDITION (PUBLISHED AS THE TIGER THAT ISNT )

This very elegant book constantly sparks Aha! moments as it interrogates the way numbers are handled and mishandled by politicians and the media.

Steven Poole, The Guardian

Personal and practical... might even cause a social revolution.

The Independent

This delightful book should be compulsory reading for everyone responsible for presenting data and for everyone who consumes it.

The Sunday Telegraph

Clear-eyed and concise. The Times

A very funny book... this is one of those math books that claims to be self-help, and on the evidence presented here, we are in dire need of it.

The Daily Telegraph

A book about numbers and how to interpret them doesnt sound like interesting bedtime reading. Yet in the hands of Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot, that is what it becomes... a reliable guide to a treacherous subject, giving its readers the mental ammunition to make sense of official claims. That it manages to make them laugh at the same time is a rare and welcome feat. The Economist

Every journalist should get paid leave to read and reread The Tiger That Isnt until theyve understood how they are being spun. New Scientist

A very fine book.Rod Liddle, The Spectator

I have sat with Andrew Dilnot in many television studios and watched with awe as he eviscerates politicians who are trying to distort the figures to suit themselves. He is ruthless in exposing the lies that statistics can seem to support. This witty and fascinating book explains to us laymen how to make sense of numbers and how we can avoid having the wool pulled over our eyes. Invaluable.David Dimbleby

With an appealing combination of dry wit and numerate common sense, the authors succeed in seeing off many tigers. Financial Times

An eye-opening lightning tour through the daily use and abuse of killer facts: the way that statistics can beguile, distort, and mislead.... This is essential reading for anyone interested in politics, economics, or current affairs.

Scotland on Sunday

Brilliant excursion into the way we misuse and misunderstand numbers and statistics, and how to see around it.... A great experience. Very readable, always informative and often entertaining, this is a book that every politician, civil servant and, well, everyone should read. popularscience.co.uk

A book that is both illuminating and highly entertaining.

Geoff Barton, The Times Educational Supplement

Easy to read, informative, humorous, and scientific. The arguments are fascinating and the examples accessible and relevant. Not only for mathematicians, but for everyone who reads the newspaper or watches the news. Journalists would be advised to read it closely and math or stats teachers will find a wealth of real-life examples for direct use in the classroom. Plus online math magazine

The Tiger That Isnt is that rarest of things: a compelling book about statistics. Easily readable... the book does a superb job at reminding us that numbers can only go so far in describing our very messy, very complicated, very human world. readysteadybook.com

This book is a valiant attempt to encourage healthy skepticism about statistics, against a culture in which both news producers and consumers like extreme possibilities more than likely ones. New Statesman

Very illuminating and comprehensible to even the mathematically challenged. Thefirstpost.co.uk

Should be compulsory reading for all schoolchildren, politicians, and government officials, and anyone who reads newspapers. It teaches critical thinking about numbers and what they mean in a hugely entertaining way.

enlightenmenteconomics.com

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Published by Gotham Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First printing, January 2009

Copyright 2009 by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot

All rights reserved
Gotham Books and the skyscraper logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Blastland, Michael.
The numbers game: the commonsense guide to understanding numbers in the news,
in politics, and in life/by Michael Blastland, Andrew Dilnot.
p. cm.
Includes index.

eISBN : 978-1-440-65527-2

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To Catherine, Katey, Rosie,
Cait, Julia, Joe, and Kitty

INTRODUCTION

This book began over a pizza as an idea for a BBC radio program. Few took it seriously: Numbers? On the radio? In six short years the program More or Less became a fixture in the schedules, the skepticism wilted, and our extravagant ambitionof changing the culture of numbers in public argumentblinked into sunlight.

Listeners told of the subversive thrill of having the mental ammunition to shoot down official claims and dodgy dataregardless of the politics. They relished clarity on facts theyd not been given straight before, told in surprising, accessible ways that made them wonder, not always politely, why theyd had to wait so long for what seemed so straightforward. The program chased down bad data and sought out good to answer pressing questions about economic and social life, it poked fun at politicians, media, and others who were content to spout numerical gibberish, it sifted research and delved into surveys and samples to find the true measure of trends, attitudes, and behavior, it sought to put risk into human proportion, and to popularize simple principles and tricks for seeing through numbers. Wherever they appearedand they seemed to appear everywherewe insisted they speak clearly, exposing their limitations, acknowledging their uncertainty, but also applauding their insights. In doing so, we came across an apparently endless stream of stories, some comic, some tragic, some scandalous.