The Art of Statistics

Spiegelhalter frames statistics as the practice of turning a real question into data and back into an answer, using a problem solving cycle as the spine of the book. Topics run from describing data and communicating risk through to probability, confidence intervals, significance testing, and the reproducibility problems that have hit published research. Every idea is worked through a real case, including survival rates for heart surgery, the Harold Shipman murders and national estimates of sexual behaviour. A recurring thread shows how the same number can be presented in ways that mislead without being technically wrong. Read it if you sign off on analysis rather than produce it.