“An extremely entertaining book in regards to a very serious problem. We deceive ourselves all the time with statistics, and it is time we wised up.” -Robert J. Shiller, Winner of the Nobel Reward in Economics

Did you know that baseball players whose titles begin with the notice “D” are more likely to pass away young? Or that Asian Us citizens are most susceptible to center attacks around the fourth day from the month? Or that drinking a full container of coffee each morning will add years to your daily life, but one cup each day about Regular Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data, and DIFFERENT WAYS to Rest with Statistics escalates the threat of pancreatic cancers? Many of these “facts” have been argued having a direct encounter by credentialed research workers and backed up with reams of data and convincing statistics.

As Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase once cynically noticed, “If you torture data long enough, it will confess.” Laying with statistics is certainly a time-honored con. In Standard Deviations, economics teacher Gary Smith strolls us through the many techniques and traps that folks use to support their own crackpot theories. Occasionally, the unscrupulous intentionally try to mislead us. Other instances, the well-intentioned are blissfully unaware of the mischief they may be committing. Today, data is indeed plentiful that researchers spend precious short amount of time distinguishing between good, meaningful signals and total rubbish. Not merely do others use data to fool us, we fool ourselves.

Using the breakout success of Nate Silver’s The Signal as well as the Noise, the once humdrum subject of statistics has never been hotter. Drawing on breakthrough research in behavioral economics by luminaries like Daniel Kahneman and Dan Ariely and taking to task some of the conclusions of Freakonomics author Steven D. Levitt, Standard Deviations demystifies the technology behind statistics and makes it easy to spot the fraud all around.