Numbers, their statistical analysis and visual representation is a wide field of study with application in almost every field of study. The title of this 'Numbers Rule Your World' is more than appropriate. This is a wonderful read on how number and statistics are prevalent in the world we live.
A book on statistics generally tends to be boring for a layman if it is more academic oriented and involves usage of a lot of technical jargon. However this book is not one of that type. In this book the author establishes relationship between statistical concepts and how they have come to influence events in modern times.
The book is segregated into 5 chapters each dealing with one fundamental concept from the world of statistics followed by a concluding section and a most important section on 'notes'.
The first chapter deals with variability associates with the concept of 'average'. In this aspect author cites the example of Fastpass strategy employed by Disney Theme Parks and 'ramp metering' applied by Minnesota traffic department to reign on the menace of variability. Disney engineers satisfied customer 'perception' through Fastpass in answering the problem of long queues. While on the other side traffic engineers did a good job through 'ramp metering' in Minnesota but their inability to understand customer perception resulted in receiving the flak.
The second chapter is around statistical modeling and the success or failure it has attained. In this case author brings in the examples modelling adopted by epidemiologist to investigate disease outbreak and credit scoring agencies for generating the credit scores. Epidemiological models help scientists to find the cause of disease and fight to nip the bud while credit scores help financial organizations understand credit worthiness of any individual. Author discusses on the pros and cons of both the modelling approaches.
Chapter 3 is around the grouping or pooling strategies applied by statisticians and how they drive success and failure in business. Here cases studies are those of the SAT examination and insurance sector. In case of SAT an incorrect grouping of white and black students resulted in the SAT scores to be interpreted wrongly. On the other hand in insurance sector over-exposure of Poe Financial Group in Florida to high risk property insurance led to it's collapse.
Next author discusses on the margin of error associated with polygraph tests and doping tests used in sports. Here he highlights how the possibility of a false-positive being reported at times results in many false-negatives i.e. actual culprits escaping undetected.
The last chapter is on the notion of occurrences or events which are statistically impossible. In this chapter author discusses how statisticians exposed a lottery scam in Canada and also alleviated the fear in frequent air-travelers post an airlines accident.
In the concluding section author revisits all the scenarios and links them back to statistics text book concepts. A wonderful important attempt for a student of statistics who would be reading this book. And then is the notes section with a treasure trove of reference materials which includes, books, articles and research papers for further reading .
I would say this is a very good book for anyone who wants to start on statistics and be hooked on to the subject. Thoroughly analyzing few hand-picked case studies the author does a fabulous job of driving in the influence of numbers, statistics and probability in our daily life. To us SAT may be an examination to judge the student abilities but the tremendous amount of data churned by statisticians to make the examination an unbiased one for all students is not visible to us. Similar is the case of traffic engineers who painstakingly work to make our commute as smooth as possible.
Reading this book and getting to know all these case studies was a privilege. The author also maintains a personal blog (www.junkcharts.typepad.com) where he discusses on data and visualizations.
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