Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

An Introduction To Calling Bullshit: Learning To Think Outside The Black Box, Jevin D. West, Carl T. Bergstrom

Numeracy

Bergstrom, Carl T. and Jevin D. West. 2020. Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World. (New York: Random House) 336 pp. ISBN 978-0525509202.

While statistical methods receive greater attention, the art of critically evaluating information in everyday life more commonly depends on thinking outside the black box of the algorithm. In this piece we introduce readers to our book and associated online teaching materials—for readers who want to more capably call “bullshit” or to teach their students to do the same.

Guns And The Limits Of Numeracy: Review Of How America Got Its Guns: A History Of The Gun Violence Crisis, By William Briggs., Joel Best

Numeracy

William Briggs. 2017. How America Got Its Guns: A History of the Gun Violence Crisis; (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press). Paperback: ISBN 978-0-8263-5813-4. E-book ISBN 978-0-8263-5814-1.

Mathematician William Briggs (co-author of the well-regarded Understanding and Using Mathematics) has written a remarkably thorough and evenhanded analysis of gun policy in the United States that draws upon the work of historians, legal scholars, social scientists, and advocates. He gives respectful hearings to claims about the importance of both gun rights and gun control. The breadth of his coverage makes it almost certain that any reader will discover new angles …

How To Lie With Coronavirus Statistics: Campbell's Law And Measuring The Effects Of Covid-19, Joel Best

Numeracy

Campbell's Law warns that when measurements become consequential those whose performance is being measured may try to skew the results. This case study examines the Trump administration's efforts to present COVID-19 statistics that would discourage restricting economic activities and encourage reopening the economy.

Dubious Data And Difficult Conversations: Review Of No Bs (Bad Stats): Black People Need People Who Believe In Black People Enough Not To Believe Every Bad Thing They Hear About Black People, By Ivory A. Toldson., Joel Best

Numeracy

Ivory A. Toldson. 2019. No BS (Bad Stats): Black People Need People Who Believe in Black People Enough Not to Believe Every Bad Thing They Hear about Black People; (Boston, Brill). Paperback ISBN 978-90-04-39702-6. E-book ISBN 978-90-04-39704-0.

Ivory A. Toldson is a professor of Counseling Psychology at Howard University and the current editor-in-chief of the Journal of Negro Education (founded in 1932), and offers an unapologetic critique of how statistical malpractice has misrepresented the situation of Blacks in the United States. Readers of Numeracy should find his examples and analysis both interesting and thought-provoking.

The Author’S Reflections On No B.S. (Bad Stats): Black People Need People Who Believe In Black People Enough Not To Believe Every Bad Thing They Hear About Black People, Ivory A. Toldson

Numeracy

Toldson, Ivory. A. 2019. No BS (Bad Stats): Black People Need People Who Believe in Black People Enough Not to Believe Every Bad Thing They Hear About Black People (Boston, MA: Brill-Sense) 194 pp. ISBN 978-9004397026.

This essay provides an introduction to No BS (Bad Stats): Black People Need People Who Believe in Black People Enough Not to Believe Every Bad Thing They Hear About Black People. In the essay, the author discusses how cynical views about the educational potential of Black children motivated him to write a book that challenges negative statistics. The essay also outlines the harmful …

Decisions, Decisions: Review Of Mindware: Tools For Smart Thinking By Richard E. Nisbett, Anne Kelly

Numeracy

Richard Nisbett. 2015. Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking. (New York, NY: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux). 336 pp. ISBN: 9780374536244.

Social psychologist Richard E. Nisbett provides help in identifying and overcoming faulty cognitive strategies and replacing them with more accurate heuristics. To do so, Nisbett draws from statistics, correlation, experiments, differences in Western and Eastern thought, and, especially, social influence.

Social Justice, Numeracy, And Teaching Statistics At A Community College, Edward Volchok

Numeracy

The author of this article reflects on the issues of justice, democracy, and numeracy. As one who has taught statistics in a community college for over 12 years, spent 28 years as a Marketing Consultant, and holds a PhD in political science, the author’s thesis is that while an advanced, democratic society can only be just with a numerate citizenry, fostering numeracy is not easy. In this article the author describes the daunting tasks of trying to define what justice is and reviews activities from his statistics class that help students develop their numeracy.

Calculus Of The Impossible: Review Of The Improbability Principle (2014) By David Hand And The Logic Of Miracles (2018) By Lásló Mérő, Samuel L. Tunstall

Numeracy

David J. Hand. 2014. The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day (New York, NY: Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 288 pp. ISBN: 978-0374175344.

Lásló Mérő. 2018. The Logic of Miracles: Making Sense of Rare, Really Rare, and Impossibly Rare Events (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press) 288 pp. ISBN: 978-0300224153.

David Hand and Lásló Mérő both grapple with the occurrence of seemingly impossible events in these two popular science books. In this comparative review, I describe the two books, and explain why I prefer Hand's treatment of the impossible.

Why I Believe People Need Painting By Numbers, Jason Makansi

Numeracy

Jason Makansi.2016. Painting By Numbers: How to Sharpen Your BS Detector and Smoke Out the Experts (Tucson AZ: Layla Dog Press). 196 pp. ISBN 978-0998425900.

This piece briefly introduces my Painting By Numbers, which aims to take the core messages of the QL/QR community from academic and professional circles to the rest of the citizenry. I describe the book in the context of the critical need for the most basic numeracy tools to help consumers of news, information, and analysis—delivered through traditional and contemporary social media outlets—determine where a reported numerical result lies on the scale from utter nonsense …

Applied Mathematics In The Humanities: Review Of Nonparametric Statistics For The Behavioral Sciences By Sidney Siegel And N. John Castellan, Jr. (2nd Ed., 1988), Paul H. Grawe

Numeracy

Sydney Siegel and N. John Castellan, Jr. Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, Second Edition (New York NY: McGraw Hill, 1988). 399 pp. ISBN: 9780070573574.

Almost 60 years ago, Sidney Siegel wrote a stellar book helping anyone in academe to use nonparametric statistics, but ironically, 60 years after that achievement, American higher education confesses itself to be in the worst Quantitative Teaching Crisis of all time. The key clue to solving that crisis may be in Siegel and Castellan’s title, Nonparametric Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, which quietly and perhaps unconsciously excludes the Humanities.

Yet it is in humanistic …

Cancer Clusters In Delaware? How One Newspaper Turned Official Statistics Into News, Victor W. Perez, Joel Best, Rachel J. Bacon

Numeracy

The flagship newspaper for the state of Delaware, the News Journal, has been instrumental in disseminating information from state-generated reports of cancer clusters to its readers over the past 7 years. The stories provide colorful maps of census tracts designated as clusters, often on the front page, and detail the types of elevated cancers found in these tracts and the purported relationship of elevated cancer rates to local industry pollution. Though the News Journal also provided its readers with advice about interpreting these data with caution, it uncritically presented these data. Using the state’s unusual definition and measurement of …