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By Harford, Tim
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- RRP: $37.99
- $29.63
- Save $8.36
- In Stock At Publisher
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Using his trademark narrative skills, Tim Harford takes us deep into the world of statistics and shows how important and powerful they can be
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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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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. Bergstrom and West will help you recognize bullshit whenever and wherever you encounter it -- even within yourself -- and explain it to your crystal-loving aunt or casually racist grandfather. Calling Bullshit is a modern handbook to the art of scepticism.
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By Smil, Vaclav
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- RRP: $40.00
- $30.00
- Save $10.00
- Pub Date
1 Dec 20
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'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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'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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Saluting the spirit of those who dared to look at the world in a new way, this insightful, revealing history explores the magical mathematics that transformed the world. 11 illustrations.
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A very entertaining book about a very serious problem. We deceive ourselves all the time with statistics, and it is time we wised up. Robert J. Shiller, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics
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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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By DK; Foreword by Parker, Matt
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- RRP: $48.00
- $36.00
- Save $12.00
- In Stock At Publisher
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Discover more than 85 of the most important mathematical ideas, theorems, and proofs ever devised, and the great minds behind them, with this original, graphic-led book. Applying the Big Ideas series' trademark combination of authoritative, accessible text and bold graphics to ch...art the development of maths through history, the book explores and explains subjects that range from ancient mathematical ideas and inventions, such as prehistoric tally bones and Sumerian multiplication tables, through to the developments in mathematics during medieval and Renaissance Europe, to the rise of game and group theory more recently Tracing maths through the scientific revolution to its 21st-century use in computers, the internet, and AI, The Maths Book uses an innovative graphic-led approach to make the subject accessible to everyone.
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30-Second Data Science covers 50 key elements in the field of data-gathering from basic to ethics, explained clearly and concisely.
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