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Os Números (Não) Mentem: Como A Matemática Pode Ser Usada Para Enganar Você (2012)

by Charles Seife(Favorite Author)

3.6 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Zahar

review 1: PROOFINESS. (2010). Charles Seife. *****.This is a fascinating exposition on how numbers and their treatment can – and are – used to influence us in the consideration of ideas or arguments. We are treated to a variety of clever ploys used in the presentation of data that are used to confuse us. These include Potemkin numbers, disestimation, fruit packing (including cherry-picking), and regression analysis. On the way towards learning these techniques, I picked up some interesting tid-bits: A formula has been derived for calculating the rating of a perfect butt. A close look at the Coleman-Franken senate race in Minnetosa. The Bush vs. Gore election results in Florida. A lesson in gerrymandering. A critique of Justice Scalia. An analysis of the financial meltdown ... moreof 2008. You will be intrigued by this book, along with, obviously, the author’s ability to keenly describe his subject and to provide apt examples to make his points. Recommended.
review 2: Now I know how bad a book has to be before I'll give it a 1.Chapter 1It's witty and interesting: a good 'hook' you might say. I realized pretty quickly that both the math and the epistemology are more appropriate for a high school student than a university educated adult. Being a high school teacher, though, I thought I'd keep reading and look for ways to incorporate the ideas into my classes. My students have to read a lot of business media so I thought I'd have them look for examples of each type of misleading math described by the author.Chapter 2Math wise, it's basic statistics, covered in the Ontario secondary school curriculum. Again the stories do a good job of bringing the concepts to life, and may be useful in a math classroom.Chapter 3The content of the examples switches to stories of financial fraud, an area in which I have done considerable reading. Unfortunately, it is clear that the author either doesn't understand the examples he is discussing or has just bent them so much to fit his thesis of 'risk management' that they're no longer accurate. I think what really bothers me is that the 4 events he references (Enron, Madoff, US subprime, and AIG) each offer much better examples of ill-used mathematical concepts than the ones he describes. Unfortunately chapter 3 made me doubt the integrity of the rest of the book so I stopped reading. I'm so glad this was a library book and I didn't actually purchase it! less

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