The Art of Statistics: How to Learn from Data by David Spiegelhalter. David is a statistician and chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication in the Statistical Laboratory at the University of Cambridge.
David’s background is medical statistics. He has served as the president of the Royal Statistical Society and has been knighted for his services to statistics. This book is a certainly amazing read for anyone as David is displaying lessons that provide me new perspectives of risk management.
David presents a generally refreshing approach to statistics that many readers will enjoy. Early chapters certainly enforce long standing knowledge (never use 3D pie charts to compare proportional metrics).
However there are certainly many interesting examples that follow revealing when statistical techniques require advanced mathematical knowledge and ultimately requiring more time (and effort) to fully understand and ultimately communicate outcomes effectively to general audience.
I continuously seek insights to regression. A sample addressing regression analysis further illustrates while this is a powerful tool, it is often misused and results in misleading trends.
In fact, David is presenting both effective and confusing examples. As a result, there is good learning that will demonstrate which examples deliver a more lasting impact. This is perhaps a very timely book for many. We are today more than ever before overwhelmed with data, and David is addressing how statistics will make sense of all that data. For example, Google’s Nest samples the temperature in your house multiple times per minute. That generates a lot of data.
Statistics for heart surgery
David in fact, presents a case study on mortality rates among British children who underwent heart surgery. The statistics helped address the upper age limit, how many procedures qualify for the rates and if a child underwent the procedure and later died, was the surgery the primary cause or a contributing factor.
Your opinion? kinda depends upon the question
A timeless lesson on asking people their opinions is presented. Again, how the question is asked can certainly drive a response in multiple outcomes. Certainly the lesson is simple: political polls are crafted with language to gain outcomes that support a predefined narrative. Yet, the same question will also result in answers not properly defined. David illustrates this point regarding a move to allow 16 year old the right to vote.
I certainly enjoyed reading this book and learned some insights regarding regression. In fact, David is delivering an easy to understand book on statistics that anyone regardless of age will enjoy. This book should spark the interest to also read How To Read Numbers and also The Data Detective.