Did you know that baseball players whose names begin with the letter “D” are more likely to die young? Or that Asian Americans are most susceptible to heart attacks on the fourth day of the month? Or that drinking a full pot of coffee every morning will add years to your life, but one cup a day increases the risk of pancreatic cancer? All of these “facts” have been argued with a straight face by credentialed researchers and backed up with reams of data and convincing statistics.
As Nobel Prize–winning economist Ronald Coase once cynically observed, “If you torture data long enough, it will confess.” Lying with statistics is a time-honored con. In Standard Deviations, economics professor Gary Smith walks us through the various tricks and traps that people use to back up their own crackpot theories. Sometimes, the unscrupulous deliberately try to mislead us. Other times, the well-intentioned are blissfully unaware of the mischief they are committing. Today, data is so plentiful that researchers spend precious little time distinguishing between good, meaningful indicators and total rubbish. Not only do others use data to fool us, we fool ourselves.
With the breakout success of Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise, the once humdrum subject of statistics has never been hotter. Drawing on breakthrough research in behavioral economics by luminaries like Daniel Kahneman and Dan Ariely and taking to task some of the conclusions of Freakonomics author Steven D. Levitt, Standard Deviations demystifies the science behind statistics and makes it easy to spot the fraud all around.

Walter Benjamin (1896-1940) has been called by Hannah Arendt the "greatest critic of the century." While an increasing number of Anglo-American literary critics draw upon Benjamin's writings in their own works, their colleagues in the philosophical community remain relatively unacquainted with his legacy. In the European intellectual world, by contrast, Benjamin's critical epistemological program, his philosophies of history and language, and his aesthetics have long since become part of philosophical discourse. The present collection of articles, many of which were contained in earlier versions in the Winter 1983 special issue of the journal "The Philosophical Forum," initiates the project of establishing Benjamin's importance to philosophy.
A balance of original work by Benjamin and important commentary on his works, this volume includes the crucial chapter from Benjamin's magnum opus "The Arcades Project," his "Program of the Coming Philosophy," and "Central Park," as well as essays by leading scholars (including Theodor W. Adorno, Leo Lowenthal, and Rolf Tiedemann) that treat single philosophical themes and relate his ideas to those of other thinkers such as Gadamer, Goodmann, and Rosenzweig. Gary Smith's introduction to the volume provides an extremely useful and sophisticated entree for readers unaccustomed to the breadth of Benjamin's philosophical allusions, as well as an informative summation of the contents of the volume. This book will be of interest to philosophers, literary theorists, art historians, anthropologists, and other social scientists.

n Israel, pilot trainees who were praised for doing well subsequently performed worse, while trainees who were yelled at for doing poorly performed better. It is an empirical fact that highly intelligent women tend to marry men who are less intelligent. Students who get the highest scores in third grade generally get lower scores in fourth grade.
And yet, it's wrong to conclude that screaming is not more effective in pilot training, women choose men whose intelligence does not intimidate them, or schools are failing third graders. In fact, there's one reason for each of these empirical facts: Statistics. Specifically, a statical concept called Regression to the Mean.
Regression to the mean seeks to explain, with statistics, the role of luck in our day to day lives. An insufficient appreciation of luck and chance can wreak all kinds of mischief in sports, education, medicine, business, politics, and more. It can lead us to see illness when we are not sick and to see cures when treatments are worthless. Perfectly natural random variation can lead us to attach meaning to the meaningless.
Freakonomics showed how economic calculations can explain seemingly counterintuitive decision-making. Thinking, Fast and Slow, helped readers identify a host of small cognitive errors that can lead to miscalculations and irrational thought. In What the Luck?, statistician and author Gary Smith sets himself a similar goal, and explains--in clear, understandable, and witty prose--how a statistical understanding of luck can change the way we see just about every aspect of our lives...and can help us learn to rely less on random chance, and more on truth.

★2013年諾貝爾經濟學獎得主、《釣愚：操縱與欺騙的經濟學》作者羅伯‧席勒（Robert J. Shiller）重磅推薦
★全美各大名校經濟學教授一致讚譽
為什麼我們用沒完沒了又毫無意義的統計說法來思考與行動？
為什麼我們相信電腦從不犯錯，不管丟什麼垃圾進去，吐出的數據都是真理？
為什麼專家欺騙我們，而我們也常欺騙自己？
把統計當工具前，先搞懂統計常識！
運用數據做決定前，先學會不被數據欺騙！
每天喝兩杯咖啡會增加罹癌風險？
在農曆五行中的火年出生的人更容易死於心臟病？
卓越的公司有共同的成功特質與模式？
自殺傾向和出生月份有關？
數據可以幫助我們評估局勢，做出良好選擇；
數據也可能誤導我們，做出錯誤決策。
大數據時代，
問題不再是沒有足夠資訊做判斷，而是如何不被眼前的資料誤導。
到底該不該喝咖啡？每天該喝幾杯咖啡？
該選擇哪家航空公司？
如何投資？運彩怎麼買？
當數據會影響你的日常決策，
當騙子也習慣用數據說話，
你更需要學會辨識隱藏在數字背後的陷阱與詭計。
耶魯大學教授運用基本統計學原理，
只要會加減乘除，就能揭穿日常生活中的各種數據騙局，
並傳授避免落入數字陷阱的簡單準則：
◎為什麼我們容易被數據欺騙？
人們容易被模式、解釋模式的理論吸引，有意或無意地忽略與之矛盾的數據。
◎數據如何欺騙我們？
‧忽略干擾因素：章魚保羅預測世界盃賽事結果成功率高達九成，但該結論忽略了章魚偏好橫向條紋圖案的因素，它只是選擇自己喜歡的國旗樣式。
‧倖存者偏差：對於敵軍最常攻擊飛機哪些部位的觀察，不會包含那些已經被擊落無法返航的飛機。對航空公司滿意度的調查，不會包含那些只搭過一次就不再來的乘客。
‧變形的圖像：圖像可以幫助我們解讀數據，但也可能扭曲或破壞數據。一旦省略數據、顛倒數軸或使用不一致的數軸間隔，將形成截然不同的圖表，產生誤導。
◎如何區分真確與胡謅？
‧常識判斷：對於看似嚴謹，但不太合常理的說法，應尋求壓倒性的證據支持。
‧新數據檢驗：採集新的資料，對既有的解釋進行檢驗。
好評推薦
這是本非常有趣的書，卻揭示了非常嚴重的問題。我們經常會被數據愚弄，是時候拆穿這些詭計了！──諾貝爾獎經濟學得主、《釣愚：操縱與欺騙的經濟學》作者 羅伯‧席勒（Robert J. Shiller）
很有趣，很八卦，卻很有見地，本書注定會成為經典。蓋瑞‧史密斯分析無數因相信數據而吃虧的案例，來告訴讀者該如何避免，這比單純講大道理有用的多了。──加州大學洛杉磯分校（UCLA）統計學系教授 愛德華‧E‧利默（Edward E. Leamer）
蓋瑞．史密斯的《常識統計學》非常有趣，利用各種例子使讀者真正理解統計學，同時發現自己過去很多知識都是錯誤的。──哈佛大學政治經濟學教授 班傑明‧M‧傅利曼（Benjamin M. Friedman）
本書幫助我們在統計學氾濫的時代，學會認清真正有效的數據。──貝萊德（BlackRock）投資管理公司總經理 布萊恩‧懷特（Brian White）