Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics: the truth about flawed statistics, AI and Big Data. Questo articolo non è disponibile.Standard Deviations: Flawed Assumptions, Tortured Data and Other Ways to Lie with Statistics: the truth about flawed statistics, AI and Big Data

Did you know that chicken eggs can influence how computers generate random events? Or that humans can postpone death until after important ceremonial occasions? Or live three to five years longer if they have positive initials, like ACE?

All these 'facts' have been presented with a straight face by researchers and backed up with convincing statistics. In Standard Deviations, economics professor Gary Smith walks us through the various tricks and traps we so often fall into. Today, data is so plentiful and our reliance on computer analysis and AI so entrenched that researchers spend precious little time distinguishing between good, meaningful deductions and rubbish. Not only do others use data to fool us, we fool ourselves.

Drawing on breakthrough research in behavioural economics by luminaries like Daniel Kahneman and Dan Ariely, and taking to task some of the conclusions of Freakonomics, Standard Deviations demystifies the science behind the statistics.

Gary Smith received his PhD in Economics from Yale University and taught there for seven years. He is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics at Pomona College in Claremont, California. This is his first book for general readers.