Visual Revelations: Defeating Deception: Escaping the Shackles of Truthiness by Learning to Think like a Data Scientist

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Notes

¹ I am thinking of Upton Sinclair's observation that “it is difficult to get someone to understand something if their paycheck depends on their not understanding it.”

² It is beyond my immediate goals to discuss what sorts of evolutionary pressures must have existed to establish and preserve truthiness. For such an in-depth look, there is no place better to begin than Nobel Laureate Danny Kahneman's inspired book Thinking, Fast and Slow.

³ When dumb ideas come at you very fast, they oftentimes seem more sensible—the faster they come, the more sensible they appear. Physicists have dubbed this the Dopeler Effect.

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Notes on contributors

Howard Wainer

Howard Wainer, who writes Visual Revelations, is currently distinguished research scientist at the National Board of Medical Examiners. He has won numerous awards and is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and the American Educational Research Association. His interests include the use of graphical methods for data analysis and communication, robust statistical methodology, and the development and application of generalizations of item response theory. His latest book is Truth or Truthiness: Distinguishing Fact from Fiction by Learning to Think Like a Data Scientist.