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Statistics Hacks: Tips & Tools for Measuring the World and Beating the Odds
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| List Price: | $29.99 |
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Product Description
This book is ideal for anyone who likes puzzles, brainteasers, games, gambling, magic tricks, and those who want to apply math and science to everyday circumstances. Several hacks in the first chapter alone-such as the "central limit theorem," which allows you to know everything by knowing just a little-serve as sound approaches for marketing and other business objectives. Using the tools of inferential statistics, you can understand the way probability works, discover relationships, predict events with uncanny accuracy, and even make a little money with a well-placed wager here and there.
"Statistics Hacks" presents useful techniques from statistics, educational and psychological measurement, and experimental research to help you solve a variety of problems in business, games, and life. You'll learn how to: Play smart when you play Texas Hold 'Em, blackjack, roulette, dice games, or even the lottery Design your own winnable bar bets to make money and amaze your friends Predict the outcomes of baseball games, know when to "go for two" in football, and anticipate the winners of other sporting events with surprising accuracy Demystify amazing coincidences and distinguish the"truly" random from the only "seemingly" random--even keep your iPod's "random" shuffle honest Spot fraudulent data, detect plagiarism, and break codes How to isolate the effects of observation on the thing observed
Whether you're a statistics enthusiast who does calculations in your sleep or a civilian who is entertained by clever solutions to interesting problems, "Statistics Hacks" has tools to give you an edge over the world's slim odds.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #53867 in Books
- Published on: 2006-05-09
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 336 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780596101640
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Bruce Frey, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of psychology and research in education at the University of Kansas. He is an award-winning teacher of statistics, research design, and measurement.
Customer Reviews
Interesting Applications of Statistics
In a previous academic life, I was a marketing major. One of the things marketers have to learn is statistics - the art/science of describing the world in terms of numbers and proportions. So I have a background in statistics, however basic, and that helped me in reading this book.
The first two sections in Statistics Hacks aren't really hacks; they serve as a basic statistics textbook. If your eyes glaze over at terms like "standard deviation," "correlation coefficient," "Z-scores," etc., you will have a tough time getting through the first 100 pages or so. But don't skip them - they are the foundation that the rest of the book is built on. You won't understand why a lot of the hacks later on in the book work unless you read the first 100 pages, and understanding why is a key to hacking anything, whether it's a computer network, an RC car, or the laws of mathematics and probability. Even if you've got a rudimentary understanding of probability, you will be well-advised to read the first hundred pages, as a refresher course if nothing else.
Chapter 3 is where the application begins. Frey teaches us how to understand percentile scores in standardized tests, and how to use a "normal curve" (think bell curve) to predict the future. The normal curve is vital to the rest of the book, so pay close attention to Hack # 25. Frey also teaches us how to establish the reliability of a certain test, how to establish its validity, and what the difference actually is between reliable and valid. We get a hint of the goodies to come in Hack # 33 (Predicting the Length of a Lifetime) and # 34 (Make Wise Medical Decisions).
Chapter 4 and 5 will be the most popular chapters in the book, Beating the Odds and Playing Games. Texas Hold 'Em is covered in Hacks # 36 and 37, but Frey also covers roulette (#39) and blackjack (#40). You can even design your own bar bets using principles of statistics. But I think that the most useful hack in the book is Spotting Fake Data (#64). Frey goes into a lot of detail here, and invokes Benford's law quite a bit, but I think that with the amount of statistics that we're confronted with daily, we need to be able to spot fake data, and be able to show why it's fake.
Statistics Hacks is not an easy book to read. As I mentioned, if you've got an aversion to math you might want to skip this one. But statistics aren't that hard to understand, and there is a lot of valuable (and potentially profitable) information in this book. Frey set out to make the concepts behind statistical analysis accessible to the average reader, and for the most part I think he has succeeded.
I'll let you know more after I win the lottery (Hack #41).
Apparently they couldn't be bothered to edit it
I'm not a statistics expert, but in the first 10 pages of this book I've already found two significant errors, the latter of which is particularly horrendous. Either the author is clueless about statistics -- a frightening thought since he supposedly teaches statistics as a professor -- or the editing of this book by statistics-clueful people was basically nonexistent. I'll assume the latter, but either way, this book is a blot on O'Reilly's record.
Page 5:
"The mean will be close to some scores and far away from some others, but if you add up those distances, you get a total that is as small as possible."
Wrong. The mean minimizes the sum of SQUARED distances; the MEDIAN minimizes the sum of the distances. Hand-waving on the next page apologizing for how complicated the formula for the standard deviation is because "there are some mathematical complications with summing distances" would suggest to me that the omission of "squared" on page 5 was not a mere typo or a misguided attempt at simplification.
OK, sure, one error like that isn't worth trashing a book over, particularly a book for lay people (albeit those with a technical bent). But check out this howler on page 10:
"Additive rule: the probability of any one of several independent events occuring is the *sum* of each event's probability." [Emphasis on "sum" is the book's, not mine.]
This isn't just plain wrong; it's cringe-inducingly, forehead-slappingly wrong. The additive rule is for any one of several mutually exclusive events occuring, and independent pretty much implies *not* mutually exclusive (the annoying corner cases being those where some events under consideration are completely impossible anyhow). The rule for one of several independent events occuring is more complicated; for example, the probability of a fair coin coming up "heads" on either its first or second flip is obviously not 1, as the author's statement would ridiculously imply, but rather 3/4.
In order to do anything with statistics at all, you absolutely MUST understand the basic concepts of "independent" and "mutually exclusive", or you're doomed from the get-go. The fact that this book is for lay people who might not already be clear on these concepts only makes having such an error in it that much less excusable.
If the author can't be bothered to stamp out obvious errors like this in the first 10 pages -- particularly the latter -- I can't be bothered to read the rest of it. Maybe the second edition will be worth glancing at, but I'm not holding my breath. (For one thing, the overall writing style in that first 10 pages wasn't particularly lucid either.)
Excellent explanation of statistics for "normal" people
I've read many books on statistics, but none were as readable as this. For each concept it teaches, it gives a real-world example of how to use it. This last feature makes it vastly superior to most college-level statistics textbooks. In addition to these examples, it is very well written and an "easy read", even if you are not a math expert (although it is conceptually sequential - if you are unfamiliar with math, the book is easier to read start to finish than hopping to the middle).
From a gambler's perspective, this information is mandatory. If you aspire to be a serious gambler and haven't put in the time to master statistics, $30 is well spent on this book.
