I loved this book. Fast, funny start, and absolutely fizzing with interesting ideas from art, science, history, commerce, fashion and beyond. Sherwood tells a great story, but one of the things that delighted me was the sheer range of stories that I'd not encountered...
Of course there is 99 Percent Invisible, home of @RomanMars and the beautiful nerds. And @HelenZaltzman 's The Allusionist. And @NoSuchThing As A Fish. But you knew about those three, right? I wanted to recommend a few less well-known podcasts (no shade intended -...
Having somehow let Talking Heads pass me by as a teenager, I've been discovering the joys of David Byrne recently. The Strong Songs podcast had a terrific analysis of the Stop Making Sense concert movie, which is astonishingly good on every level. The BBC's Soul Music...
I've been enjoying The Innovation Delusion by Lee Vinsel and Andrew Russell. Particularly interesting when it gets to the joys and challenges of maintenance. My colleague Gavin Jackon has recently published Money in One Lesson in the UK (US publication in April) - a...
“She may look at it because it has pictures.” That was Florence Nightingale’s withering comment, as she sent a report about public health reform to Queen Victoria.Nightingale was not much impressed with the Queen (“The least self-reliant person I have ever known”)....
The Prime Minister made much the same false statement to parliament on 24 Nov, 5 Jan, 12 Jan and 2 Feb. @FullFact have repeatedly requested a correction and the Office for Statistics Regulation have written to his office to ask him to stop. The claim is important in...
To celebrate paperback publication day of "The Data Detective", and in no particular order... The Art of Statistics by David Spiegelhalter @D_Spiegel is a wide-ranging guide to how statistics work, full of vivid and humane examples by the world's greatest living...
At 2am on October 9th, 1974, police in the picturesque tidal basin area of Washington DC spotted a speeding car, weaving around, headlights off. They pulled it over, and out jumped a flamboyantly dressed woman, yelling in both English and Spanish. She promptly threw...
“The crooks already know these tricks; honest men must learn them in self-defense.” – so wrote nerd legend Darrell Huff, in his million-selling “How To Lie With Statistics” (1954). It’s a delightful little work, full of deceptive graphics, spurious correlations,...