Vital statistics

Scientists, it turns out, are really bad at statistics. Numerous studies show that a startling proportion of academics consistently misunderstand the statistics they’re using, and the conclusions that can be drawn from them. A computer algorithm that highlights basic statistical errors was recently set loose on a huge sample of published research papers in psychology  and found that almost half contained a mathematical mistake; 13 per cent had a serious screw-up that meant their reported results might have been completely wrong. If scientists — who use statistics all day to analyse their experiments — are so innumerate, what hope is there for everyone else?

Enter Sir David Spiegelhalter, Winton professor for the public understanding of risk at Cambridge University. His new volume, The Art of Statistics, is in the great educational tradition of its publishing imprint, Pelican Books: an attempt to get everyone up to speed with the practical uses of statistics, without pages of terrifying equations or Greek letters.