“I spend a lot of time talking to people who disagree with me - I would go so far as to say that it's my favourite leisure activity.”
I'm an avid fan o
“I spend a lot of time talking to people who disagree with me - I would go so far as to say that it's my favourite leisure activity.”
I'm an avid fan of More or Less, the popular statistics radio programme on BBC Radio, and I always enjoy Ben Goldacre's appearances on the show. At one point, I remember Tim Hartford introducing him as something like "the perennially angry Guardian columnist," to which Goldacre responded, "I am not perennially angry!" or similar. He got quite heated about it, much to everyone's amusement.
But Bad Science makes it clear, in the most entertaining way possible, why he's always angry. Homeopathy, alternative medicine, vitamins, fad nutrition, cosmetics, the MMR scare, the South African government's refusal to espouse antiretrovirals... he covers all of them, provides plenty of hard data, and eloquently and entertainingly discusses both the problems with the science and the potential dangers with the way they're advertised. I really enjoyed the book. My only complaint--and it's pretty minor--is that Goldacre's commentary can be a little patronising; he studiously avoids what he terms the "tedious" technical details, warns the reader of any impending math, and at one point goes into a diatribe that seems to assume the reader is an MMR scare believer. He also shies away from using probability, preferring natural frequencies, because he considers probability both unnatural and unnaturally difficult, but given that the UK weather only started using probability in 2011, I guess it's a cultural thing.
Even though I guess I knew a lot of the substance in the abstract, this book was still an eye-opener for me. I knew the claims of the vitamin industry were questionable, but I had no idea how many studies actually disputed the common wisdom. (By the way, did you know that the "beta carotene is good for your eyesight" thing was a myth propagated by the British during WWII? They claimed their pilots' aim was due to a high-carrot diet, not to, say, radar.) I had no idea of the tragedy of Matthias Rath's influence on the South African government and the millions of lives lost because of it. I had never heard of Brain Gym, and I hope to never hear of it again. (By the way, Dr Goldacre, will you please go after Lumosity? Their ads drive me nuts.) He details the media mayhem surrounding the MMR-vaccine-causes-autism saga. He eviscerates, in an entirely fact-based discussion, the claims about homeopathy and other alternative medicines. My favourite part was when he bought a "certified professional membership" to the American Association of Nutritional Consultants, the same august institution claimed by a famous nutritionist, for his dead cat:
"I mean, I don't sign my dead cat up to bogus professional organizations for the good of my health, you know. It may sound disproportionate to suggest that I will continue to point out these obfuscations for as long as they are made, but I will, because to me there is a strange fascination in tracking their true extent."
I think Goldacre has isolated the core problem with this popular anti-science: it trains the populous to trust white-lab-coated authority figures, not facts. It teaches us not to question, but to blindly believe. And that is the true tragedy of Bad Science.
“Murder is not a replicable experiment. Every one is unique.” --Val Tomlinson
When I saw a book on forensics written by Val McDermid on Netgalley, ~4.5
“Murder is not a replicable experiment. Every one is unique.” --Val Tomlinson
When I saw a book on forensics written by Val McDermid on Netgalley, I knew I had to get my hands on it. Given the talent for viscerally creepy psychological thrillers that McDermid has displayed in her Tony Hill novels, I was excited to see what she would make of nonfiction.
Forensics is as riveting as I had anticipated. McDermid isn’t just a talented writer; she also does her research. In this book, she proves it. Each chapter discusses a different discipline of forensics: crime scene analysis, fire investigation, forensic entomology, pathology, toxicology, fingerprinting, blood spatter, DNA, anthropology, facial reconstruction, digital forensics, forensic psychology, and, last, the courtroom. Enlivened by interviews with experts and stories of individual cases, each chapter melds together the history of the discipline with modern-day practices, challenges, and triumphs.
Even though I’m an inveterate reader of detective novels with a tendency to read nonfiction forensics books, I learned a ton from this book. For example, I didn’t know that the first book on forensic entomology, The Washing Away of Wrongs, was published in 1247 in China. I had no idea that the diatom composition in the remains of a match found at a fire scene can be used to identify the brand, or that 97% of fires in Scotland are investigated by people with less than a week of training in fire scene investigation, or that serial killers generally live within the triangle formed by their first three victims. Although I’d heard of Bernard Spilsbury, the charismatic and dogmatic pathologist who acted as an expert witness in over 200 trials, I had no idea that his evidence on Crippen (of the Brides-in-the-Bath fame) was conclusively proved to be false.
While the facts are fascinating in their own right, the stories were even better. McDermid weaves individual cases into each chapter that serve to illuminate various themes. Even those I’d heard before, such as the history of fingerprints or the sordid tale of “inheritance powder” (a.k.a arsenic), McDermid’s style was sharp and vivid enough to hold my attention throughout. One of my favourite stories was the first case in which a bullet was forensically traced back to a specific gun: a lady summoned the Bow Street Runners to her house, where a robbery occurred and her butler was apparently wounded in the struggle with the burglar. Long story short, the butler actually did do it, and the gun told the tale. Or there’s the “Phantom of Heilbronn,” a mysterious, apparently supernaturally speedy serial killer whose DNA was found in a massive series of unconnected cases across Europe. (The DNA turned out to be from a woman at a cotton swab factory-- a lesson in using materials that weren’t certified for forensic use.)
Throughout, McDermid emphasizes that forensics is more an art than a science, and that treating such evidence as infallible is terribly dangerous. McDermid goes into detail about the miscarriages of justice made by overconfident courtroom personalities like Spilsbury, and the self-fulfilling prophecy and stage-magic of early forensic psychology, and the potential political and racial pitfalls of familial DNA searches. Although she details the problems with the adversarial justice system, and the ways that attacks on the personalities of expert witnesses strain and even pervert the system, she sees it as crucial to the overall system. It’s not a perfect system--as one of McDermid’s interviewees, Fiona Raitt, said:
"There is deep reluctance for governments to explore what juries do. It is probably too terrifying."
It may be the best we have. Although each forensic discipline is imperfect, together they can be melded into a case that can withstand the pressure of the court to give us the closest thing to truth that we can obtain.
If you’re looking for casual nonfiction, then I'd definitely recommend this as one of the most entertaining and informative books on forensics that I've ever read.
~~I received an advanced reader copy of this book through Netgalley from the publisher, Grove Atlantic, in exchange for my honest review.~~
Defaults matter. One of the most well-worn examples, used on the first day classes in everything from statistics to psychology, is that of organ d~3.5
Defaults matter. One of the most well-worn examples, used on the first day classes in everything from statistics to psychology, is that of organ donation. Over 98% of the populations of Austria, Belgium, France, Hungary, Poland, and Portugal are all organ donors. In Denmark, Germany, and the U.K, the percentage doesn’t top 20. Are the French simply more philanthropic than the British? Are Austrians really just better people than the Germans? The answer is, of course, probably not. The 99%-countries all have organ donation chosen as the default, requiring citizens to explicitly opt out of the process. The others require their citizens to actually opt in.
Choosing Not to Choose explores the power and peril of defaults from the perspective of well-meaning “choice architects.” Sunstein explores the pros and cons of defaults and active choosing, the cognitive biases involved, and the promise and perils of personalized choice. He starts by arguing that defaults give us a way of “choosing not to choose,” and that this “second order decision” is vitally important. According to Sunstein, several studies indicate that the cognitive costs of choice have the most detrimental effects on the poor and stressed. At the same time, however, cognitive biases such as the endowment effect and inertia cause people to tend to stick with defaults, so it’s vitally important that the defaults don’t have their own detrimental effects.
I thought one of the most interesting parts was the section on active choosing. Active choosing, sometimes referred to as “forced choice,” is where the choice architect sets up a situation that necessitates an explicit decision between alternatives. Sunstein points out that active choices, are, in their way, as paternalistic as straightforward mandates: they withhold a desired outcome until the person capitulates and makes their choice. (I found the term ‘paternalism’ interesting in its own right, given its loaded and unacknowledged gender bias.) Active choosing isn’t always better because it usually requires either direct penalties (such as those imposed in the U.S. for not choosing health insurance) or leveraging (where a desired outcome such as a driver’s license is used to force someone to make an unrelated choice such as organ donation). Sometimes, the cognitive cost of choosing is prohibitive. For example, consider all those sites that force you to choose whether you want spam from them before you can sign up. Sure the choice is better than being defaulted into spam, but I’d much rather they defaulted me out and let me choose to receive their junk mail. Even so, they have their place, particularly when the choice architect is biased or lacking in information and defaults have the potential to cause harm. Sunstein also discusses problematic phenomenons such as “decision fatigue” and “reactance,” where peoples’ annoyance at the forced choice or even the default cause them to do the opposite of what they believe the choice architect desires. (Personally, I’m very prone to reactance.)
The last section is on personalized defaults. In describing personalized defaults, Sunstein says that “this idea may seem far-fetched, the stuff of science fiction,” but in my opinion, that’s only if you’re living in the past. Sunstein does do a good job discussing the dangers of narrowed perspectives and the potential for polarization. At the same time, he brings up an interesting point: in the case of high diversity, personalized defaults are often the best way to go.
The style is casual and conversational, and stays far on the “pop” side of the “pop science” spectrum. If you’ve taken a class in algorithmic game theory, then almost everything Sunstein says will seem rather obvious. (The entire issue can be put in terms of game theory: one must first decide upon a definition of the social welfare function, taking into consideration externalities as well as the way to summarize utility, then quantify the costs and “effort costs” of choices and the utilities of the outcomes. A choice architect is effectively trying to construct a stable coarse-correlated equilibrium.) Although interesting enough, the book isn’t all that information-heavy, and most of the book is merely a recapitulation of what Sunstein states in the first chapter. Sunstein’s argument is valuable, but I would have preferred a little more substance and a little less repetition.
My largest concern with the ideas presented was the implicit assumption that the information provided about the choices would itself be unbiased. Except for a brief section on “altering rules” (how people can change from the default) and “framing rules” (the “frames” used to convince people to opt in or opt out), Sunstein generally assumes that choice architects will be able to provide fair information about the choices. He asserts that defaults should always be “transparent and subject to scrutiny,” but I suspect that is itself close to impossible. One of the most provocative issues Sunstein discusses is the idea of “informed choice,” especially when one starts to consider the cognitive biases involved. As Sunstein points out, when one starts trying to define “informed” as the removal of cognitive biases, it’s far too easy to delude oneself that “informed” is thinking exactly like the choice architect.
Overall, if you're curious about the issues of defaults and choice, then I think Choosing Not to Choose makes for a pleasant companion read to other pop social science books such as Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow or Watts' Everything is Obvious Once You Know The Answer.
~~I received this ebook through Netgalley from the publisher, Oxford University Press, in exchange for my honest review.~~...more
A man asks an architect to build a square house with square windows, one on each side, so that each window faces south. How can this be?
Three men~3.5
A man asks an architect to build a square house with square windows, one on each side, so that each window faces south. How can this be?
Three men go to a hotel and take a suite for which the charge is $30. Each gives the bellhop $10, who takes the cash down to the manager. But the manager realizes that the actual cost of the suite is $25, so he sends the bellhop back with five $1. The bellhop realizes this will be hard to split, so he pockets two of the bills and returns $1 to each man. Now each man payed $9, so the total is $27. The bellhop snuck $2 in his pocket, for a total of $29. But the men originally handed over $30. What happened to the other dollar?
Want to know the answers? These and other puzzles come from Eugene P. Northrup’s book, Riddles in Mathematics.
In the introduction, Daniel Silver discusses the book’s originally proposed titles. Northrop wanted "Two and Two Make Five," but the publishers were horrified by the idea of promoting such sacrilege and instead suggested a title that would never have made it through the gutter minds of today: "Tricks with Figures." Eventually, they settled upon Riddles in Mathematics: A Book of Paradoxes.
To Northrop, a paradox is “Anything which offhand appears to be true, but is actually false; or which is simply self-contradictory.” This form of paradox is merely a misunderstanding, a mistake made by someone who is talking too fast and thinking too superficially. To me, a paradox is not simply a mistake in calculation, but something deeper. A perfect example of a “true” mathematical paradox, to my mind, is the probability of choosing any particular value from a distribution over the real numbers, a topic covered briefly by Northrop. If the distribution is real-valued, then the probability of choosing any particular value is 0, but somehow the integral of all these 0’s is 1.* For Northrop, on the other hand, a paradox is merely a fallacy caused by insufficient thought or insight, a student error that becomes obvious in hindsight.
Even so, the “paradoxes” that Northrup points out are certainly omnipresent. For example, one of the mistakes I find most frustrating is the general assumption that events with unknown probability are uniformly distributed. According to Northrup, this type of assumption actually distinguishes two schools of thought: the “cogent reasonists,” who assume that in absence of additional knowledge, two choices are equally likely, and the “insufficient reasonists,” who require some form of evidence before assuming a distribution. I’m definitely one of the latter. For example, say we don’t know whether or not it will rain tomorrow. To me, if you don’t know the probability, you don’t know it-- either do your best to estimate it or just state that you don’t know anything at all. A cogent reasonist would say that in absence of evidence, the chance is 50-50. Northrup goes on to point out the contradictions that can arise from such beliefs.
Riddles In Mathematics is enjoyable enough, although it’s a little hard to characterize. It starts out with word problems and brain teasers, where confusion is cultivated by simple phrasing. It then continues on to simple arithmetic, geometry, and algebraic fallacies. I must admit, Northrop demonstrates an impressive variety of ways in which people can be tripped up by division by zero. Despite the entertaining writing, all of these “paradoxes” will be painfully obvious to anyone with a basic mathematical background. From that point forward, however, things start getting technical, delving deep into complex geometric fallacies, discussions of infinity, problems with probability, lessons in logic, and conundrums in calculus. Personally, I’ve never been fond of geometry and have little interest in topology, but I thoroughly enjoyed the sections dealing with infinity and fun with contradictions in convergence. Northrup also writes an entertaining introduction to the subject of martingales. Considering the book is over half a century old, it has aged quite gracefully. Overall, I’d concur that while it is unlikely that someone will find all of the sections interesting, Riddles in Mathematics does indeed have something for everyone.
~~ I received this ebook from the publisher, Dover Publications, in exchange for my honest review. ~~
A man asks an architect to build a square house with square windows, one on each side, so that each window faces south. How can this be?
Three men~3.5
A man asks an architect to build a square house with square windows, one on each side, so that each window faces south. How can this be?
Three men go to a hotel and take a suite for which the charge is $30. Each gives the bellhop $10, who takes the cash down to the manager. But the manager realizes that the actual cost of the suite is $25, so he sends the bellhop back with five $1. The bellhop realizes this will be hard to split, so he pockets two of the bills and returns $1 to each man. Now each man payed $9, so the total is $27. The bellhop snuck $2 in his pocket, for a total of $29. But the men originally handed over $30. What happened to the other dollar?
Want to know the answers? These and other puzzles come from Eugene P. Northrup’s book, Riddles in Mathematics.
In the introduction, Daniel Silver discusses the book’s originally proposed titles. Northrop wanted "Two and Two Make Five," but the publishers were horrified by the idea of promoting such sacrilege and instead suggested a title that would never have made it through the gutter minds of today: "Tricks with Figures." Eventually, they settled upon Riddles in Mathematics: A Book of Paradoxes.
To Northrop, a paradox is “Anything which offhand appears to be true, but is actually false; or which is simply self-contradictory.” This form of paradox is merely a misunderstanding, a mistake made by someone who is talking too fast and thinking too superficially. To me, a paradox is not simply a mistake in calculation, but something deeper. A perfect example of a “true” mathematical paradox, to my mind, is the probability of choosing any particular value from a distribution over the real numbers, a topic covered briefly by Northrop. If the distribution is real-valued, then the probability of choosing any particular value is 0, but somehow the integral of all these 0’s is 1.* For Northrop, on the other hand, a paradox is merely a fallacy caused by insufficient thought or insight, a student error that becomes obvious in hindsight.
Even so, the “paradoxes” that Northrup points out are certainly omnipresent. For example, one of the mistakes I find most frustrating is the general assumption that events with unknown probability are uniformly distributed. According to Northrup, this type of assumption actually distinguishes two schools of thought: the “cogent reasonists,” who assume that in absence of additional knowledge, two choices are equally likely, and the “insufficient reasonists,” who require some form of evidence before assuming a distribution. I’m definitely one of the latter. For example, say we don’t know whether or not it will rain tomorrow. To me, if you don’t know the probability, you don’t know it-- either do your best to estimate it or just state that you don’t know anything at all. A cogent reasonist would say that in absence of evidence, the chance is 50-50. Northrup goes on to point out the contradictions that can arise from such beliefs.
Riddles In Mathematics is enjoyable enough, although it’s a little hard to characterize. It starts out with word problems and brain teasers, where confusion is cultivated by simple phrasing. It then continues on to simple arithmetic, geometry, and algebraic fallacies. I must admit, Northrop demonstrates an impressive variety of ways in which people can be tripped up by division by zero. Despite the entertaining writing, all of these “paradoxes” will be painfully obvious to anyone with a basic mathematical background. From that point forward, however, things start getting technical, delving deep into complex geometric fallacies, discussions of infinity, problems with probability, lessons in logic, and conundrums in calculus. Personally, I’ve never been fond of geometry and have little interest in topology, but I thoroughly enjoyed the sections dealing with infinity and fun with contradictions in convergence. Northrup also writes an entertaining introduction to the subject of martingales. Considering the book is over half a century old, it has aged quite gracefully. Overall, I’d concur that while it is unlikely that someone will find all of the sections interesting, Riddles in Mathematics does indeed have something for everyone.
~~ I received this ebook from the publisher, Dover Publications, in exchange for my honest review. ~~
Because this book is shaped by Dr. Ariely's experiences and research, I'm afraid that any review I could write would end up being mainly about the autBecause this book is shaped by Dr. Ariely's experiences and research, I'm afraid that any review I could write would end up being mainly about the author. Since this isn't an autobiography, such a review might be against the impressively subjective new policies of GoodReads: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1... The fear of breaking those shiny new rules is stifling my ability to write, so I'm afraid I can't contribute a review. It's a great book, though. Give it a try....more
**edited 01/27/14 When I first saw this book, I knew I had to read it. Not only is it written by an author I've already had a positive experience with **edited 01/27/14 When I first saw this book, I knew I had to read it. Not only is it written by an author I've already had a positive experience with (The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives), but the book had one of the funniest cover designs I've seen all year. In black text on a green background, it says, "Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior." In the spaces in between, in green only slightly lighter than the background, it says, "Psst: Hey There, Yes: You, Sexy. Buy This Book Now. You Know You Want It." I laughed when I saw it and obeyed--well, not to the point of buying it, but I did pick it up.
I dove in eagerly, only to be brought to an abrupt and unpleasant halt in the first chapter. There's nothing that irritates me more than bad science, and the misapplication of statistics is on my permanent hit list. One of Mlodinow's examples of the importance of the subconscious is (according to him) that we are more attracted to people who share our last name. As "evidence", he provides a chart of raw counts of husband-wife surnames over three states which indicates that a Jones is more likely to marry a Jones even though Smiths are more common. My problem? Well, this is a perfect example of Bad Statistics: he grabs a convenient weak correlation over a ridiculously tiny sample, ignores all potential confounding variables (e.g. names aren't uniformly distributed: even though the overall population of Jones are smaller, a Jones may be more likely to meet another Jones than a Smith; last names indicate ethnicity and nationality and we know people have strong homophilous preferences that have nothing to do with melodious surnames, etc, etc.), and then extrapolates an outrageously broad and demonstrably inaccurate causal conclusion (this data indicates that we are subconsciously attracted to people who share our names). I put the book down in disgust.
And so the story ends, until one day, I ran across a version of the book on audio, read by none other than Mlodinow himself. I decided to give the book one more chance. I'm glad I did.
Tim Harford, you're breaking my heart, and more importantly, you're undermining my faith in quantitative economics. I am a passionate**edited 01/18/14
Tim Harford, you're breaking my heart, and more importantly, you're undermining my faith in quantitative economics. I am a passionate fan of your BBC radio show, "More or Less." What could possibly be more entertaining than a topical radio programme that uses statistics to fact-check the politicians, especially if it occasionally measures things in whales and/or Wales? Sure, I don't have the same faith in rationality that you do--well, not without completely bending the meaning of "rationality" out of joint to allow for irrational influences such as spite-motivation--but I accept the premise. I greatly enjoyed your previous book, The Undercover Economist, and that book was just as insistent on human rationality. But what I can't cope with is this book's betrayal of the primary credo that separates idle speculation from science.
Mr. Harford, what, oh what, happened to your belief in the rallying cry of "More or Less?" What happened to "correlation does not imply causation?"
This book is AVAILABLE FOR FREE ONLINE! RIGHT HERE! It is amazingly written--it's geared towards a beginner audience, but is so beautifully motivated aThis book is AVAILABLE FOR FREE ONLINE! RIGHT HERE! It is amazingly written--it's geared towards a beginner audience, but is so beautifully motivated and illustrated that it's enjoyable for all levels. There are also optional advanced (slightly more mathy) sections scattered throughout....more
Full disclosure--Tim Hartford runs my absolute favourite radio programme ever: BBC Radio 4's More or Less, a topical statistics progr**edited 12/10/13
Full disclosure--Tim Hartford runs my absolute favourite radio programme ever: BBC Radio 4's More or Less, a topical statistics programme. Yes, you heard me right. Basically, they do fact-checking on audience-recommended bizarre-sounding statistics. It's funny, fun, and relevant, and has the added benefit of actually catching all the zombie statistics that politicians use. Catch NPR ever having anything like that.
Anyway, all that simply goes to note that I was heavily, heavily predisposed to like this book. And I did.
I have seriously mixed feelings about Freakonomics, so be prepared for a very opinionated review. Like The Tipping Point, it was writ**edited 12/15/13
I have seriously mixed feelings about Freakonomics, so be prepared for a very opinionated review. Like The Tipping Point, it was written by a journalist, and is an extremely engaging and entertaining read. It certainly has more scientific merit and empirical backing than Gladwell's book. It also presents several important statistical points that it is critical to understand: for example, at several points, the book reiterates that correlation does not imply causation. There is also an intuitive, if vague, description of Bayes' Law. What I loved most about the book was its quirky and off-the-wall thinking, the entertaining narration, and some of the very clever insights into the world of economics. And no matter how much I rail against his abuse of statistics, I picked up the second book from the library, which goes quite far in showing how well-written and entertaining I found it.
This is a brilliant and fantastically well-written popular science account of the importance of networks and complexity in our everyd**edited 01/18/14
This is a brilliant and fantastically well-written popular science account of the importance of networks and complexity in our everyday lives. Every concept is illustrated and told via beautifully embedded and incredibly entertaining stories. At the same time, the book's style is so clear and simple that I would love to hand it around to all the non-computer scientists I know who ask me about my research. Although certainly far from scientific, this book certainly is more eloquent, entertaining, and informative than I think a scientist could ever be.
If you've ever wanted to kill an automated service agent, raise your hand...
This book provides an entertaining peek at the intersecti**edited 01/18/14
If you've ever wanted to kill an automated service agent, raise your hand...
This book provides an entertaining peek at the intersection of technology, sociology, and psychology. It discusses various experiments which indicate how people anthropomorphize inanimate technology and how this tendency can be used to reduce confounding variables and better understand human behaviour. It wasn't quite what I had expected: given the title and blurb, I had thought that the book would focus more on the mathematics and technology than the sociology. Instead, I found that the book instead discussed how technology could be used to improve sociological experiments and how these experiments, in turn, could be used to improve interfaces for human and computer interaction.
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