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A review by anna_hepworth
Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data and Other Ways to Lie With Statistics by Gary Smith
Did not finish book. Stopped at 47%.
DNF; was likely to be 1 or 2 stars. I did start skimming in the hope that at least I'd get the gist, but I was too frustrated to keep going.
There are better books that discuss these topics. No need to read this one.
Many of the examples given were shallow, and missed things I would consider relevant when discussing why the conclusions were likely to be skewed. The writing style--which I've found reasonable when reading about fields I'm not familiar with--grated, although how much that had to do with the frequency with which I said WTAF about some statement, I'm not sure (I am very familiar with data and statistics). Examples are Very USian, from a particular cultural milieu, and I often find books written from that particularly alien-to-me culture very off-putting. I suspect that Black and/or working class USians would find this full of micro-aggressions.
Reading one of the early examples, my thoughts were 'wow, this has not aged well', and was flabbergasted to discover that this was published in 2014.
I did find some of the section on reproducibility of science to be good, but as I'd hit the 'I am not going to read all of this in detail, I'm going to skim' by then, I can't be sure it didn't have similar issues to the previous sections.
There are better books that discuss these topics. No need to read this one.
Many of the examples given were shallow, and missed things I would consider relevant when discussing why the conclusions were likely to be skewed. The writing style--which I've found reasonable when reading about fields I'm not familiar with--grated, although how much that had to do with the frequency with which I said WTAF about some statement, I'm not sure (I am very familiar with data and statistics). Examples are Very USian, from a particular cultural milieu, and I often find books written from that particularly alien-to-me culture very off-putting. I suspect that Black and/or working class USians would find this full of micro-aggressions.
Reading one of the early examples, my thoughts were 'wow, this has not aged well', and was flabbergasted to discover that this was published in 2014.
I did find some of the section on reproducibility of science to be good, but as I'd hit the 'I am not going to read all of this in detail, I'm going to skim' by then, I can't be sure it didn't have similar issues to the previous sections.