Probability & Statistics

'There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil' Bill Gates Is flying dangerous? How much do the world's cows weigh? And what makes people happy? From earth's nations and inhabitants, through the fuels and foods that energize them, to the transportation an...d inventions of our modern world - and how all of this affects the planet itself - in Numbers Don't Lie, Professor Vaclav Smil takes us on a fact-finding adventure, using surprising statistics and illuminating graphs to challenge lazy thinking. Packed with 'well-I-never-knew-that' information and with fascinating and unusual examples throughout, we see how it is too soon to judge shale gas, that vaccination yields the best return on investment, and why electric cars aren't as great as we think (yet). There's a wonderful mix of science, history and wit, all in bite-sized chapters on a broad range of topics. Should you trust unemployment figures? Is China's rise unstoppable? And what's worse for the environment: your car or mobile phone? Unclouded by pessimism or optimism and unafraid of big questions, Smil explains why calls for the Anthropocene era may be premature but why the Paris Agreement does not go far enough. These issues are not straightforward and progress takes longer than you think, but with Smil as our authoritative and entertaining guide we get a healthy shot of realism. Urgent and essential, Numbers Don't Lie is a powerful rallying cry for interrogating what you take to be true in these significant times. Smil is on a mission to make facts matter, because after all, numbers may not lie, but which truth do they convey? 'He is rigorously numeric, using data to illuminate every topic he writes about. The word polymath was invented to describe people like him' Bill Gates 'Important' Mark Zuckerberg, on Energy 'One of the world's foremost thinkers on development history and a master of statistical analysis . . . The nerd's nerd' Guardian 'There is perhaps no other academic who paint
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Topics include developments based on breakthroughs in the mathematical understanding of phenomena describing systems in highly inhomogeneous and disordered media, including the KPZ universality class (describing the evolution of interfaces in two dimensions), random walks in rand...om environment and percolative systems.
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The world is awash in bullshit, and we're drowning in it. Politicians are unconstrained by facts. Science is conducted by press release. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. These days, calling bullshit is a noble act. Based on their popular, eponymous, course at the Un...iversity of Washington, professors Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West catalogue bullshit in its many forms, explaining where bullshit arose in our evolutionary past and why it is ubiquitous today. Calling Bullshit offers readers the tools to see through the obfuscations, deliberate and careless, that dominate every realm of our lives. In this lively guide Bergstrom, a computational biologist, and West, a statistician, teach us that calling bullshit is crucial to a properly functioning social group, whether it be a circle of friends, a community of academics, or the citizenry of a nation.
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A leading data visualization expert explores the negative--and positive--influences that charts have on our perception of truth.

'There is no author whose books I look forward to more than Vaclav Smil' Bill Gates Is flying dangerous? How much do the world's cows weigh?And what makes people happy? From earth's nations and inhabitants, through the fuels and foods that energize them, to the transportation and... inventions of our modern world - and how all of this affects the planet itself - in Numbers Don't Lie, Professor Vaclav Smil takes us on a fact-finding adventure, using surprising statistics and illuminating graphs to challenge lazy thinking. Packed with 'well-I-never-knew-that' information and with fascinating and unusual examples throughout, we find out how many people it took to build the Great Pyramid, that vaccination yields the best return on investment, and why electric cars aren't as great as we think (yet). There's a wonderful mix of science, history and wit, all in bite-sized chapters on a broad range of topics. Urgent and essential, Numbers Don't Lie inspires readers to interrogate what they take to be true in these significant times. Smil is on a mission to make facts matter, because after all, numbers may not lie, but which truth do they convey? 'He is rigorously numeric, using data to illuminate every topic he writes about. The word polymath was invented to describe people like him' Bill Gates 'Important' Mark Zuckerberg, on Energy 'One of the world's foremost thinkers on development history and a master of statistical analysis . . . The nerd's nerd' Guardian 'There is perhaps no other academic who paints pictures with numbers like Smil' Guardian 'In a world of specialized intellectuals, Smil is an ambitious and astonishing polymath who swings for fences . . . They're among the most data-heavy books you'll find, with a remarkable way of framing basic facts' Wired 'Vaclav Smil has led a 30-year career of interdisciplinary contrarianism, writing hundreds of scientific articles and dozens of books attacking sacred cows of Western environmental and geopolitical thought' Foreign Po
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