How to Make the World Add Up - Tim Harford

My notes

Tim Harford is a very engaging writer who appears part statistician, part economist, part historian.

The ultimate message from this `very entertaining author is be curious

Rule One: Notice your emotional response

Don’t accept or reject a claim just because of how it makes us feel

Rule Two: Combine Statistical perspective with the ‘worm’s eye’ personal view

Rule Three: Do we actually understand the labels?

Rule Four: Put claims into perspective by looking for comparisons and context.

Rule Five: Look behind the stats and where they came from.

Rule Six: What’s missing or not being represented.

Would our conclusions differ if they were included?

Rule Seven: Ask tough questions about algorithms?

Without intelligent openness, the big datasets that drive the algos cannot be trusted

Rule Eight: Pay attention to the bedrock of official statistics.

Rule Nine: Look under the surface of any beautiful graph or chart.

Rule Ten: Keep an open mind.

Be like John Maynard Keynes who can change his mind and adapt with the times, not like Irving Fisher

Andrew Elliot’s ‘Landmark Numbers’

Tim’s point is that having a few of these comitted to memory, makes it easy to compare one thing to another.

GDP of USA: ~ $820 trn / $820,000 bn

Length of a medium-sized novel: ~10,000 words