Washoe County Library System

A Professor of International Health and popular global TED speaker and his son and daughter-in-law who co-founded the Gapminder Foundation, explain how the best guesses, thoughts and concepts we accept as fact are actually tempered and informed by unconscious and predictable biases. When asked simple questions about global trendswhat percentage of the worlds population live in poverty; why the worlds population is increasing; how many girls finish...

"From facial recognition--capable of checking people into flights or identifying undocumented residents--to automated decision systems that inform who gets loans and who receives bail, each of us moves through a world determined by data-empowered algorithms. But these technologies didn't just appear: they are part of a history that goes back centuries, from the census enshrined in the US Constitution to the birth of eugenics in Victorian Britain to...

Statistics are everywhere, as integral to science as they are to business, and in the popular media hundreds of times a day. In this age of big data, a basic grasp of statistical literacy is more important than ever if we want to separate the fact from the fiction, the ostentatious embellishments from the raw evidence -- and even more so if we hope to participate in the future, rather than being simple bystanders. In The Art of Statistics, world-renowned...

Economics professor Gary Smith walks us through the various tricks and traps that people use to back up their own crackpot theories using statistics. Sometimes, the unscrupulous deliberately try to mislead us. Other times, the well-intentioned are blissfully unaware of the mischief they are committing. Smith demystifies the science behind statistics and makes it easy to spot the fraud all around.

Unravels the mystery of data, graphing, and statistics and illustrates how to use data and create the best graph for different types of data.

"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...

"Is it safer to fly or take the train? How dangerous is skydiving? And is eating that extra sausage going to kill you? We've all heard the statistics for risky activities, but what do they mean in the real world? In The Norm Chronicles, journalist Michael Blastland and risk expert David Spiegelhalter explore these questions through the stories of average Norm and an ingenious measurement called the MicroMort-a one in a million chance of dying. They...