The Numbers Game: The Commonsense Guide to Understanding Numbers in the News, in Politics, and in Life

183 Pages·2009·1.17 MB·English

by  Michael Blastland

Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction
COUNTING 1 - USE STRAWBERRY JAM
SIZE 2 - IT’S PERSONAL
CHANCE 3 - THE TIGER THAT ISN’T
UP AND DOWN 4 - A MAN AND HIS DOG
AVERAGES - THE WHITE RAINBOW
PERFORMANCE - THE WHOLE ELEPHANT
RISK - BRING HOME THE BACON
SAMPLING - DRINKING FROM A FIRE HOSE
DATA - KNOW THE UNKNOWNS
SHOCK FIGURES 10 - WAYWARD TEE SHOTS
COMPARISON 11 - MIND THE GAP
CAUSATION 12 - THINK TWICE
LAST WORD
Acknowledgements
FURTHER READING
INDEX
PRAISE FOR THE UK EDITION (PUBLISHED AS
THE TIGER THAT ISN’T)
“This very elegant book constantly sparks ‘Aha!’ moments as it interrogates the
way numbers are handled and mishandled by politicians and the media.”
—Steven Poole, The Guardian
“Personal and practical . . . might even cause a social revolution.”
—The Independent
“This delightful book should be compulsory reading for everyone responsible for
presenting data and for everyone who consumes it.”
—The Sunday Telegraph
“Clear-eyed and concise.”—The Times
“A very funny book . . . this is one of those math books that claims to be self-
help, and on the evidence presented here, we are in dire need of it.”
—The Daily Telegraph
“A book about numbers and how to interpret them doesn’t sound like interesting
bedtime reading. Yet in the hands of Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot, that
is what it becomes . . . a reliable guide to a treacherous subject, giving its readers
the mental ammunition to make sense of official claims. That it manages to
make them laugh at the same time is a rare and welcome feat.”—The Economist
“Every journalist should get paid leave to read and reread The Tiger That Isn’t
until they’ve understood how they are being spun.”—New Scientist
“A very fine book.”—Rod Liddle, The Spectator
“I have sat with Andrew Dilnot in many television studios and watched with awe
as he eviscerates politicians who are trying to distort the figures to suit
themselves. He is ruthless in exposing the lies that statistics can seem to support.
This witty and fascinating book explains to us laymen how to make sense of
numbers and how we can avoid having the wool pulled over our eyes.
Invaluable.”—David Dimbleby
“With an appealing combination of dry wit and numerate common sense, the
authors succeed in seeing off many ‘tigers.’”—Financial Times
“An eye-opening lightning tour through the daily use and abuse of ‘killer facts’:
the way that statistics can beguile, distort, and mislead. . . . This is essential
reading for anyone interested in politics, economics, or current affairs.”
—Scotland on Sunday
“Brilliant excursion into the way we misuse and misunderstand numbers and
statistics, and how to see around it. . . . A great experience. Very readable,
always informative and often entertaining, this is a book that every politician,
civil servant and, well, everyone should read.”—popularscience.co.uk
“A book that is both illuminating and highly entertaining.”
—Geoff Barton, The Times Educational Supplement
“Easy to read, informative, humorous, and scientific. The arguments are
fascinating and the examples accessible and relevant. Not only for
mathematicians, but for everyone who reads the newspaper or watches the news.
Journalists would be advised to read it closely and math or stats teachers will
find a wealth of real-life examples for direct use in the classroom.”—Plus online
math magazine
“The Tiger That Isn’t is that rarest of things: a compelling book about statistics.
Easily readable . . . the book does a superb job at reminding us that numbers can
only go so far in describing our very messy, very complicated, very human
world.”—readysteadybook.com
“This book is a valiant attempt to encourage healthy skepticism about statistics,
against a culture in which both news producers and consumers like extreme
possibilities more than likely ones.”—New Statesman
“Very illuminating and comprehensible to even the mathematically challenged.”
—Thefirstpost.co.uk
“Should be compulsory reading for all schoolchildren, politicians, and
government officials, and anyone who reads newspapers. It teaches critical
thinking about numbers and what they mean in a hugely entertaining way.”
—enlightenmenteconomics.com

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First printing, January 2009

Copyright © 2009 by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot All rights reserved
Gotham Books and the skyscraper logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Blastland, Michael.
The numbers game: the commonsense guide to understanding numbers in the news,
in politics, and in life/by Michael Blastland, Andrew Dilnot.
p. cm.
Includes index.
eISBN : 978-1-440-65527-2
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To Catherine, Katey, Rosie,
Cait, Julia, Joe, and Kitty
INTRODUCTION
This book began over a pizza as an idea for a BBC radio program. Few took it
seriously: “Numbers? On the radio?” In six short years the program More or
Less became a fixture in the schedules, the skepticism wilted, and our
extravagant ambition—of changing the culture of numbers in public argument—
blinked into sunlight.
Listeners told of the subversive thrill of having the mental ammunition to
shoot down official claims and dodgy data—regardless of the politics. They
relished clarity on facts they’d not been given straight before, told in surprising,
accessible ways that made them wonder, not always politely, why they’d had to
wait so long for what seemed so straightforward. The program chased down bad
data and sought out good to answer pressing questions about economic and
social life, it poked fun at politicians, media, and others who were content to
spout numerical gibberish, it sifted research and delved into surveys and samples
to find the true measure of trends, attitudes, and behavior, it sought to put risk
into human proportion, and to popularize simple principles and tricks for seeing
through numbers. Wherever they appeared—and they seemed to appear
everywhere—we insisted they speak clearly, exposing their limitations,
acknowledging their uncertainty, but also applauding their insights. In doing so,
we came across an apparently endless stream of stories, some comic, some
tragic, some scandalous.
Neither of us is a professional mathematician or statistician. One is a
Cambridge English graduate who began asking dumb questions about numbers
in the news only to find that too many of the answers were even dumber, the
other an economist who is now principal of a college at Oxford University, and
came to public notice as the fiercely independent head of an economic research
institute. One thinks the other tall enough to be a mutant giant, while the second
thinks the first should get a proper job as a jockey, which makes us middling, on
average, and just goes to show the trouble with averages. What we share is the
same incredulity at the way a whole language seems to be debased.
The radio program acquired a growing, often devoted, always opinionated
audience of nearly a million, a Web site, imitators in the press, the financial
backing of the Open University, and the interest of publishers. It became part of
BBC training for new and established journalists, the basis of lectures, articles in
the press, and journals and, though we hope this is not the last of its