Washoe County Library System

"Data is fundamental to the modern world. From economic development, to healthcare, to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender, because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems. And women pay tremendous costs for this bias, in time, money, and often with their lives. Celebrated...

"Today we think statistics are the enemy, numbers used to mislead and confuse us. That's a mistake, Tim Harford says in The Data Detective. We shouldn't be suspicious of statistics-we need to understand what they mean and how they can improve our lives: they are, at heart, human behavior seen through the prism of numbers and are often "the only way of grasping much of what is going on around us." If we can toss aside our fears and learn to approach...

"Hard work, we are often told, is the key to success. Putting in the effort, doing things the "right way," even if it's the long way. But according to Marcus du Sautoy, this common wisdom has it backwards. The key to success isn't hard work-it's shortcuts. We make the most progress when we find clever ways to do more with less. And there is no better way of finding shortcuts than math. Math is all about minimizing the amount of work you have to do...

Students learn to think like scientists with this colorful, kid-friendly introduction to the scientific method. Understandable terms and concepts are made easy through real world activities and they use information to investigate through questioning.

"In graphic novel format, follows the adventures of Max Axiom as he explains the scientific method"--Provided by publisher.

Presents some of the mysteries surrounding dinosaurs, including such questions as what sounds they made, how they laid their eggs, how they cared for their young, whether they were cold-blooded or warm-blooded, and why they died out.

Now in fifth grade, Drake Doyle and Nell Fossey continue to combine their detective and scientific investigation skills to solve a variety of cases, involving a noisy laundry chute, a ruined flower show, and a ghost.

Explores the phenomenon of black holes, explains why astronomers think they exist, what causes them, what they are like inside, and the search to find black holes in space.

"American taxpayers spend $30 billion annually funding biomedical research. By some estimates, half of the results from these studies can't be replicated elsewhere-the science is simply wrong. Often, research institutes and academia emphasize publishing results over getting the right answers, incentivizing poor experimental design, improper methods, and sloppy statistics. Bad science doesn't just hold back medical progress, it can sign the equivalent...