By the numbers…
Mark Twain quotes Disraeli: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”; H.G. Wells avers that “Satan delights equally in statistics and in quoting scripture”; but the remarkable Hans Rosling begs to differ…
Rosling, a physician and medical researcher who co-founded Médecins sans Frontièrs (Doctors without Borders) Sweden and the Gapminder Foundation (with his son and daughter-in-law), and developed the Trendalyzer software that represents national and global statistics as animated interactive graphics (e.g., here), ha become a superstar on the lecture circuit. He brings his unique insight and approach to the BBC with The Joy of Stats…
It’s above at full length, so takes a while to watch in toto— but odds are that one will enjoy it! [UPDATE: since this post was published, the full version has been rendered “private”; unless and until it’s reposted in full, the taste above will have to do. Readers in the UK (or readers with VPNs that terminate in the UK) can see the full show soon after it airs on BBC Four on Thursday the 13th on the BBC iPlayer. As a further consolation, here is statistician Andrew Gelman’s “Five Books” interview– his choice of the five best books on statistics– for The Browser. ]
As we realize that sometimes we can, after all, count on it, we might recall that it was on this date in 1776 that Thomas Paine (originally anonymously) published his case for the independence of the American Colonies, “Common Sense”… and after all, as Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace pointed out (in 1820), “the theory of probabilities is at bottom nothing but common sense reduced to calculus.”
source: University of Indiana