"Today we think statistics are the enemy, numbers used to mislead and confuse us. That's a mistake, Tim Harford says in The Data Detective. We shouldn't be suspicious of statistics-we need to understand what they mean and how they can improve our lives: they are, at heart, human behavior seen through the prism of numbers and are often "the only way of grasping much of what is going on around us." If we can toss aside our fears and learn to approach...

"Black Stats-a comprehensive guide filled with contemporary facts and figures on African Americans-is an essential reference for anyone attempting to fathom the complex state of our nation. With fascinating and often surprising information on everything from incarceration rates, lending practices, and the arts to marriage, voting habits, and green jobs, the contextualized material in this book will better attune readers to telling trends while challenging...

"A beginner's guide to programming with R, the statistical programming language. Covers key programming techniques like manipulating data structures, reading data from a file, and writing functions. Introduces statistics topics like probability distributions, hypothesis testing, regression analysis, and statistical plots. Includes exercises throughout each chapter"--

"A lesson in reading between the lines of the U.S. census to uncover the stories behind the data"--

"[T]his new fanbook is filled with fun trivia, unique lingo, and illustrated behind-the-skills how-to's. Chapters include Team Tidbits (salient baseball facts about every MLB team), Think Like a Manager (essential strategies to understand), He Reminds Me Of (compares current players to legendary greats of America's favorite pastime), and much more!"--Amazon website.

American democracy has become coin operated. Special interest groups increasingly control every level of government. The necessity of raising huge sums of campaign cash has completely changed the character of politics and policy making, determining what elected representatives stand for and how they spend their time. The marriage of great wealth and intense political influence has rendered our country unable to address our most pressing problems,...