Daniel J. Levitin - A Field Guide to Lies
I riferimenti sono ai capitoli, avendo io letto l'edizione elettronica.
INTRODUCTION | THINKING, CRITICALLY
▪ It is easy to lie with statistics and graphs because few people take the time to look under the hood and see how they work.
PLAUSIBILITY
▪ Statistics, because they are numbers, appear to us to be cold, hard facts. It seems that they represent facts given to us by nature and it’s just a matter of finding them. But it’s important to remember that people gather statistics.
▪ Unfortunately, many people have trouble thinking clearly about numbers because they’re intimidated by them.
HOW SCIENCE WORKS
▪ Probability, as introduced in Part One, is deductive. We work from general information (such as “this is a fair coin”) to a specific prediction (the probability of getting three heads in a row). Statistics is inductive. We work from a particular set of observations (such as flipping three heads in a row) to a general statement (about whether the coin is fair or not)
Attenzione: la differenza è importante! Spesso si pensa che probabilità e statistica siano la stessa cosa, perché hanno campi di applicazione simili.